Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1395
October 19, 2015
The Spotlight on Digital CIO Oct. 2015
Digital CIOs as Chief Insight Officer: Rise for Changes
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.1 million page views with about #2251th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom.
The CIO of today must be able to transition confidently between being strategic and tactical. It is critical to positioning oneself to be able to understand the business and become the trusted and strategic business adviser. However, results are what matter most to those running the business which requires a collaborative and creative approach to leverage strengths and offset weaknesses, along with skilled and inspired staff who have clear direction on the call to action and how the work is meeting company’s objectives, like driving top line revenue.
The Spotlight on Digital CIO - Oct. 2015Digital CIO - Rise to Change: In the industrial age, CIOs are the second class executive who often does not have a seat at the big table to make strategy, and who spends most of time and resource on “keeping the light on.” However, digital means the increasing speed of changes, data abundance, and hyperconnectivity, technology is often the very disrupter of innovation, and information is the lifeblood of organizations, many forward-thinking organizations empower their CIOs to be the frontrunner digital transformer, recognize CIOs as communication hub and change agent due to the unique position they hold to oversight business processes, and interweave business capabilities, so are CIOs ready to rise for CHANGES?
How do you Define the Strategic Role of CIO at Board Level: Due to the changing nature of technology, CIO role continues to be shaken up, refined, reinvented and reenergized; and many IT organizations are at cross road to either being transformed to be more value added digital engine for their business growth, or being irrelevant as a cost center only. How do you define the strategic role of CIOs at Board Level and what are important skills they need to cultivate?CIOs as Digital Leaders: How to lead effectively: Many forward-thinking organizations declare that they are in the information management businesses regardless vertical sector, and IT plays a pivotal role in leading the digital transformation. CIOs as a digital leader: How to lead effectively?
Digital CIOs’ Top Challenges: Due to the changing nature of technologies, CIOs seem to be always at the “hot seat” in the face of increasing business demand, talent shortage, budget limitation or numerous critics from businesses. Now, information is permeating into every corner of business, what technology is expected to do has changed significantly over recent years, although every company has its own circumstances, overall speaking, what are the common challenges facing today’s IT organizations, how can CIOs leverage resources to stay focus, and continually improve IT agility and maturity, to become an integral part of business?
IT Leaders and Professionals: Can you ask the right questions? Although almost all serious digital professionals today understand the importance of asking the right question, it takes both courage and humility for leaders to ask questions, rather than providing the answers; and it takes both insight and wisdom to ask the right questions; many times, you have to breakdown the status quo and breakthrough the conventional wisdom, to keep informative and inquisitive, always to challenge and ensure that the question itself is corrected before answering
Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.1 million page views with about #2251th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom.The CIO of today must be able to transition confidently between being strategic and tactical. It is critical to positioning oneself to be able to understand the business and become the trusted and strategic business adviser. However, results are what matter most to those running the business which requires a collaborative and creative approach to leverage strengths and offset weaknesses, along with skilled and inspired staff who have clear direction on the call to action and how the work is meeting company’s objectives, like driving top line revenue.
The Spotlight on Digital CIO - Oct. 2015Digital CIO - Rise to Change: In the industrial age, CIOs are the second class executive who often does not have a seat at the big table to make strategy, and who spends most of time and resource on “keeping the light on.” However, digital means the increasing speed of changes, data abundance, and hyperconnectivity, technology is often the very disrupter of innovation, and information is the lifeblood of organizations, many forward-thinking organizations empower their CIOs to be the frontrunner digital transformer, recognize CIOs as communication hub and change agent due to the unique position they hold to oversight business processes, and interweave business capabilities, so are CIOs ready to rise for CHANGES?
How do you Define the Strategic Role of CIO at Board Level: Due to the changing nature of technology, CIO role continues to be shaken up, refined, reinvented and reenergized; and many IT organizations are at cross road to either being transformed to be more value added digital engine for their business growth, or being irrelevant as a cost center only. How do you define the strategic role of CIOs at Board Level and what are important skills they need to cultivate?CIOs as Digital Leaders: How to lead effectively: Many forward-thinking organizations declare that they are in the information management businesses regardless vertical sector, and IT plays a pivotal role in leading the digital transformation. CIOs as a digital leader: How to lead effectively?
Digital CIOs’ Top Challenges: Due to the changing nature of technologies, CIOs seem to be always at the “hot seat” in the face of increasing business demand, talent shortage, budget limitation or numerous critics from businesses. Now, information is permeating into every corner of business, what technology is expected to do has changed significantly over recent years, although every company has its own circumstances, overall speaking, what are the common challenges facing today’s IT organizations, how can CIOs leverage resources to stay focus, and continually improve IT agility and maturity, to become an integral part of business?
IT Leaders and Professionals: Can you ask the right questions? Although almost all serious digital professionals today understand the importance of asking the right question, it takes both courage and humility for leaders to ask questions, rather than providing the answers; and it takes both insight and wisdom to ask the right questions; many times, you have to breakdown the status quo and breakthrough the conventional wisdom, to keep informative and inquisitive, always to challenge and ensure that the question itself is corrected before answeringBlogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Being Customer-Centric is not about Perfection
If you are constantly focused on your perfection, you are focused on you - not your customer.
Digital is the age of customers. Customer-centricity is the description of the nature of the priorities in the organizations today. Building customer centricity consistently in a way that delivers the right experiences to the right customers at the right times is, in most companies, enormously complicated. Is Being customer-centric about perfection or improving? Inside-out or outside-in? What’s the best way to achieve it?
To think outside yourself in a customer-centric way requires, ironically, knowing yourself as a customer first. Knowing your inner customer helps build empathetic bridges to understanding customers both like and unlike ourselves. Seeing your company as customers is a very powerful experience - and sometimes a disgusting experience when companies have low values. However, striving for perfection might become opium for a company. It can lead to an ironic situation where you are much more focused to achieving perfection itself instead to improve customer centricity. It can also make you unwilling to accept customers' complaints, as you are “perfect.“ Another issue is that we usually think of perfection from our own shoes, not from customers; do we regularly ask our customers about their feeling of the perfection of our service? Furthermore, how do we measure perfection and how close to it we are? I personally believe that, from a managerial perspective, it is much more appropriate to set clear and measurable objectives based on customers’ expectations, and to passionately work on their fulfillment. This is the space where we should strive for continuously improving, not perfection.
The focus on perfection is indeed flawed, both as a practical matter and for the environment that is created. If you communicate your stance that you *expect* perfection as opposed to *strive* for it, then you will create timid underlings who will fear errors as oppose to reach for success. Building a culture of risk tolerance inspires the exercise of people's natural initiative and curiosity while fear of failure chokes it off. Perfectionism is hell on people around the perfectionist. It manifests itself in and out of leadership and positions. It is also useful to draw a distinction between perfection that is a function of personality and perfection that is simply a misguided understanding of the leader's role. The antidote for the latter is counter productive for the former, and vise verse. Great team play requires that people are aware of what other people are doing and that they recognize others may see things in a very different way. Personality is 'inside' the person, and some are better than others at shielding those outside from their personal demons. Lots of rooms here are for the choice of learning/growing/changing, as people are willing to improve. A good leader is encouraging people to challenge themselves and the status quo, but recognizes their team may hear the same words in different ways - they've got to bring their team members to a common understanding - which may not be the one that they themselves started out with.
If you are constantly focused on your perfection, you are focused on you - not your customer. It depends on whether or not a leader really wants customer-centricity, innovation, and team spirit. For some, the requirement for perfection is a function of personality. All that self-involvement might well be like an addiction. That quest/requirement/ expectation is a defense mechanism used in an attempt to keep order in a chaotic life. For such folks, inner work is the only way to rise to healthier levels of personality, and in doing so relaxes the demands placed on self and others. The cure is focusing on the customer and their perfection. What customers and client generally want is a no-nonsense, fit-for-purpose, and hassle free solution to their needs, combined with as little interaction with the seller as possible. Fit-for-purpose" - is equally true for human relationships as for solutions to other needs. Improvement and achieving the right balance in any truly customer-centric organization requires all team members to believe that things can be improved, and the culture that nourishes the desire and will to improve individually & teams needs leadership & encouragement on the Improvement Journey, be it customer, service, product, or business solution. There are two points here, though:
* Trying to improve a process or system beyond about 90% effective start to yield diminishing returns in short order.
* A system or process that was 99% effective yesterday might be redundant or utterly ineffective tomorrow
In business, excessive focus on "being perfect" results in introspection, under-delegation, and unwillingness to admit any failures/shortcomings. The leader suffers, staff suffers, customers suffer. There is no perfect thinking or perfect human beings. Respectful objections and opposing viewpoints can be exactly what expands the team's thinking and leads to deeper understand, both of the problem and the process. Customer relationships are a reflection of the company's internal relationships. Perfection is a null-sum game.You very quickly hit diminishing returns. Mostly, achieving near-perfection is about simply not doing stupid stuff. You need to believe that, the customer is the lifeline of the business. Once you have this basic premise right, everything flows naturally, exceptional customer service and WOW moments will be the automatic result.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital is the age of customers. Customer-centricity is the description of the nature of the priorities in the organizations today. Building customer centricity consistently in a way that delivers the right experiences to the right customers at the right times is, in most companies, enormously complicated. Is Being customer-centric about perfection or improving? Inside-out or outside-in? What’s the best way to achieve it?
To think outside yourself in a customer-centric way requires, ironically, knowing yourself as a customer first. Knowing your inner customer helps build empathetic bridges to understanding customers both like and unlike ourselves. Seeing your company as customers is a very powerful experience - and sometimes a disgusting experience when companies have low values. However, striving for perfection might become opium for a company. It can lead to an ironic situation where you are much more focused to achieving perfection itself instead to improve customer centricity. It can also make you unwilling to accept customers' complaints, as you are “perfect.“ Another issue is that we usually think of perfection from our own shoes, not from customers; do we regularly ask our customers about their feeling of the perfection of our service? Furthermore, how do we measure perfection and how close to it we are? I personally believe that, from a managerial perspective, it is much more appropriate to set clear and measurable objectives based on customers’ expectations, and to passionately work on their fulfillment. This is the space where we should strive for continuously improving, not perfection.
The focus on perfection is indeed flawed, both as a practical matter and for the environment that is created. If you communicate your stance that you *expect* perfection as opposed to *strive* for it, then you will create timid underlings who will fear errors as oppose to reach for success. Building a culture of risk tolerance inspires the exercise of people's natural initiative and curiosity while fear of failure chokes it off. Perfectionism is hell on people around the perfectionist. It manifests itself in and out of leadership and positions. It is also useful to draw a distinction between perfection that is a function of personality and perfection that is simply a misguided understanding of the leader's role. The antidote for the latter is counter productive for the former, and vise verse. Great team play requires that people are aware of what other people are doing and that they recognize others may see things in a very different way. Personality is 'inside' the person, and some are better than others at shielding those outside from their personal demons. Lots of rooms here are for the choice of learning/growing/changing, as people are willing to improve. A good leader is encouraging people to challenge themselves and the status quo, but recognizes their team may hear the same words in different ways - they've got to bring their team members to a common understanding - which may not be the one that they themselves started out with.
If you are constantly focused on your perfection, you are focused on you - not your customer. It depends on whether or not a leader really wants customer-centricity, innovation, and team spirit. For some, the requirement for perfection is a function of personality. All that self-involvement might well be like an addiction. That quest/requirement/ expectation is a defense mechanism used in an attempt to keep order in a chaotic life. For such folks, inner work is the only way to rise to healthier levels of personality, and in doing so relaxes the demands placed on self and others. The cure is focusing on the customer and their perfection. What customers and client generally want is a no-nonsense, fit-for-purpose, and hassle free solution to their needs, combined with as little interaction with the seller as possible. Fit-for-purpose" - is equally true for human relationships as for solutions to other needs. Improvement and achieving the right balance in any truly customer-centric organization requires all team members to believe that things can be improved, and the culture that nourishes the desire and will to improve individually & teams needs leadership & encouragement on the Improvement Journey, be it customer, service, product, or business solution. There are two points here, though:* Trying to improve a process or system beyond about 90% effective start to yield diminishing returns in short order.
* A system or process that was 99% effective yesterday might be redundant or utterly ineffective tomorrow
In business, excessive focus on "being perfect" results in introspection, under-delegation, and unwillingness to admit any failures/shortcomings. The leader suffers, staff suffers, customers suffer. There is no perfect thinking or perfect human beings. Respectful objections and opposing viewpoints can be exactly what expands the team's thinking and leads to deeper understand, both of the problem and the process. Customer relationships are a reflection of the company's internal relationships. Perfection is a null-sum game.You very quickly hit diminishing returns. Mostly, achieving near-perfection is about simply not doing stupid stuff. You need to believe that, the customer is the lifeline of the business. Once you have this basic premise right, everything flows naturally, exceptional customer service and WOW moments will be the automatic result.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
October 18, 2015
A Heterogeneous Board
Heterogeneous BoDs with independent thinking enforce governance, and diversity strengthens creativity.
There is no question that businesses need digital leadership in today's boardrooms, with “VUCA” characteristics of business dynamic, overloading information, and globalization as the new normal of business expansion, all of these bring the significant opportunities and responsibilities for the new breed of digital BoDs, and it is crucial to brainstorm on how to build a highly effective board with a heterogeneous viewpoint, and right mixing of Individualism and collectivism nature, to set the tone of directorship with innovation and influence.
The most important aspect of building a heterogeneous board is to embrace the diversity of worldview with the cognitive difference - crucial to avoiding groupthink - Boards that are too homogenous are at much higher risk of making poor decisions or not asking the questions that need to be asked - there are plenty of examples of this. A heterogeneous board is composed of the BoDs with cognitive difference, diverse background, capabilities, skills, and education. A heterogeneous Board is couched in terms of diversity of world view and cognitive difference rather than traditional understanding about diversity (gender, races, etc). It is so important to seek out different voices. The research supports the need to do this and the success that follows. It is scary if you are looking for validation and with diverse feedback you get disagreement or divergent thought. But that is exactly what leads to a better outcome. It is the leadership for. We should no longer be discussing/debating the benefits of diversity; there is ample research that demonstrates the business case and the societal case for increasing diversity on Boards. The conversation should now be focused on what the 'real' obstacles are, and the actions that are expected in order to move the dial and embrace the new hybrid word -
inclusiversity.”
Board has to pay more attention to the culture, which will "eat the strategy" otherwise." What comes first, strategy or culture?" Many picks strategy; the company needs to determine its direction, and then assure that the culture supports that strategy. Many of us also like Drucker's witty quote: Culture eats strategy for breakfast! It means the way things are done and allowed to be done every day. It is reflected and influenced by policies, practices, rewards and incentives. often, executives and the board assume that these things are correct, but employees know they are not and can tell you what gets in the way. When culture is "working" it can unlock powerful synergies that drive performance..... especially in today's world that relies so much on collaboration and teamwork. The spirit comes from the top, Board should set the culture tone. Many say boards do not pay enough attention to the culture within the company. since the culture can undermine strategy, they certainly should be concerned and seek assurance that the culture is aligned with the strategy and that the values that form the foundation of the couture are aligned with the expectations of customers.
Heterogeneous BoDs with independent thinking enforce governance, and diversity strengthens creativity: Diverse candidates have a lesser chance of being interlocked, over boarded, over tenured, and socially, management captured. These are a few examples of factors compromising board independence. The multi-functionality needed today to leaders imposes modern professionals more flexible, less tied to standards. One of the biggest challenges in this complex, multi-polar world is the fact that we need different perspectives, different knowledge, and different ways to solve a problem. Sometimes there is not "one" answer: there are some, or many: that is why what is first of all needed is to think as a team. It takes a confident person to be able to surround yourself with people who may share a different opinion than you. It takes a lot of work to be ready to defend your stance. Ultimately it is best for the boardroom to give a 360 viewpoint and execute the strategy and avoid group think. It takes mentors to help people understand their role on the board. The high quality Board leadership has the very characteristics such as multi-dimensional intelligence, openess, and wisdom.
The board needs diversity, or even more crucially, cognitive difference, to provide a perspective that goes beyond the gaps in board discussion. They need to incorporate their unique viewpoint on people, innovation, CSR etc into their solid knowledge of overall business & technology. Until then, they will be seen as the 'diversity' contributor- the ones who fill in the gaps and make leadership difference.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
There is no question that businesses need digital leadership in today's boardrooms, with “VUCA” characteristics of business dynamic, overloading information, and globalization as the new normal of business expansion, all of these bring the significant opportunities and responsibilities for the new breed of digital BoDs, and it is crucial to brainstorm on how to build a highly effective board with a heterogeneous viewpoint, and right mixing of Individualism and collectivism nature, to set the tone of directorship with innovation and influence.
The most important aspect of building a heterogeneous board is to embrace the diversity of worldview with the cognitive difference - crucial to avoiding groupthink - Boards that are too homogenous are at much higher risk of making poor decisions or not asking the questions that need to be asked - there are plenty of examples of this. A heterogeneous board is composed of the BoDs with cognitive difference, diverse background, capabilities, skills, and education. A heterogeneous Board is couched in terms of diversity of world view and cognitive difference rather than traditional understanding about diversity (gender, races, etc). It is so important to seek out different voices. The research supports the need to do this and the success that follows. It is scary if you are looking for validation and with diverse feedback you get disagreement or divergent thought. But that is exactly what leads to a better outcome. It is the leadership for. We should no longer be discussing/debating the benefits of diversity; there is ample research that demonstrates the business case and the societal case for increasing diversity on Boards. The conversation should now be focused on what the 'real' obstacles are, and the actions that are expected in order to move the dial and embrace the new hybrid word -
inclusiversity.”
Board has to pay more attention to the culture, which will "eat the strategy" otherwise." What comes first, strategy or culture?" Many picks strategy; the company needs to determine its direction, and then assure that the culture supports that strategy. Many of us also like Drucker's witty quote: Culture eats strategy for breakfast! It means the way things are done and allowed to be done every day. It is reflected and influenced by policies, practices, rewards and incentives. often, executives and the board assume that these things are correct, but employees know they are not and can tell you what gets in the way. When culture is "working" it can unlock powerful synergies that drive performance..... especially in today's world that relies so much on collaboration and teamwork. The spirit comes from the top, Board should set the culture tone. Many say boards do not pay enough attention to the culture within the company. since the culture can undermine strategy, they certainly should be concerned and seek assurance that the culture is aligned with the strategy and that the values that form the foundation of the couture are aligned with the expectations of customers.
Heterogeneous BoDs with independent thinking enforce governance, and diversity strengthens creativity: Diverse candidates have a lesser chance of being interlocked, over boarded, over tenured, and socially, management captured. These are a few examples of factors compromising board independence. The multi-functionality needed today to leaders imposes modern professionals more flexible, less tied to standards. One of the biggest challenges in this complex, multi-polar world is the fact that we need different perspectives, different knowledge, and different ways to solve a problem. Sometimes there is not "one" answer: there are some, or many: that is why what is first of all needed is to think as a team. It takes a confident person to be able to surround yourself with people who may share a different opinion than you. It takes a lot of work to be ready to defend your stance. Ultimately it is best for the boardroom to give a 360 viewpoint and execute the strategy and avoid group think. It takes mentors to help people understand their role on the board. The high quality Board leadership has the very characteristics such as multi-dimensional intelligence, openess, and wisdom.
The board needs diversity, or even more crucially, cognitive difference, to provide a perspective that goes beyond the gaps in board discussion. They need to incorporate their unique viewpoint on people, innovation, CSR etc into their solid knowledge of overall business & technology. Until then, they will be seen as the 'diversity' contributor- the ones who fill in the gaps and make leadership difference.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The Digital Culture is Like“AGUA”
The vivid metaphors for describing culture is like the visible and invisible levels of an iceberg - the solid state of ‘water.’
Every organization has a culture - defined or not. Organizational culture is the collective mindset, attitudes, and the set of behaviors, expectations, and assumptions that people have for "how things are around here." The culture of an organization is comprised of many intricate and interconnected parts, including corporate strategy and related strategic goals, job roles, business processes, core values, communications practices, corporate attitudes and business policies. Culture therefore is or ought to be very dynamic, changes constantly - like water with the following characteristics:
Flow: Digital boundaries are not "sharp" lines; they are fluid to adapt to changes, so does a digital culture. Digital culture as collective minds and attitudes have to continue to move forward, not backward; so we have to reflect and examine our own thoughts, beliefs, and actions, and we also have to have the ability to ask the hard questions and engage in meaningful dialogue even if we do not agree with one another-we can indeed agree to disagree, yet, stay engaged with one another because the dialogue is important, yet, the culture harmony is priceless. Culture is like water, permeating into every corner of your organization, influence how you think, communicate, and act. Culture is the aggregate of all employees' mindsets, attitudes, and behaviors. As such, it changes constantly as events happen and people come and go. It's not something that can be manually controlled by the employer, but culture can be changed, or even well designed, the right set of principles and rules can enable and constrain culture. Your culture guides and informs ‘How you do WHT you do, and should point you to WHY you do it.’ It’s a soft, but tough element which can harden the hardest, to lift your organization to the next level, or sink your business tragically.
‘Iceberg’ culture metaphor: The vivid metaphors for describing culture is like the visible and invisible levels of an iceberg - the solid state of ‘water.’ It is like an iceberg where the visible elements, such as behaviors, make much sense with recognizing and understanding the underlying mindsets, expectations, and assumptions. You cannot consider culture as one element of the strategy execution unless you can identify the dominant cultures, subcultures, and the layers of those cultures. Layers of culture is a critical aspect here. The iceberg metaphor well describes the layers of culture, with values and beliefs often being under the surface. It’s nearly impossible to change the culture without bringing these to the surface, articulating them and assessing whether they are still the right ones for the current environment. And that in a fast growing company people tend to have similar ideal values that then get manifested in its corporate culture. When the company then grows, this corporate culture tends to stay the same over time -the culture inertia. However, in order to move up to the next level of organizational maturity, the culture needs to be changed as well to adapt to the emerging digital trend and pulling strategy execution towards the right decision. Typically, strategy execution fails due to surprises and unknown/ unforeseen factors. If you take the visible aspects of culture -the tip of the iceberg- alone as an element of the strategy execution, you may well head into trouble. There is stereotyping and elements of ethnocentric culture as well as there is also subculture. So basically the execution and conviction of strategy strongly relies on culture.
Openness: Either a running river or a deep sea is open and nourishing for life growth. It’s not necessarily just about transparency, but the balance of visibility and invisibility; inclusiveness and dynamic. Culture is invisible, but culture can be read through employees behaviors and activities. Visibility is really important for teams as every member is always aware of how the whole process is going on, what does business culture encourage them to do, and what results have already been achieved. Water is transparent. Transparency doesn’t mean to be compliant only, or being too “direct,” too straight, or even too “rude.” Make everything clear like the water does not permit arguing. Just like the water is too pure, has no fish. No doubt about it, transparency is a fundamental factor for performance. However, a prerequisite for transparency is trust. Trust can only be built in an organizational environment conducive to the culture of learning and ideal-seeking behavior (behavior-enhancing organizational structure). Therefore, openness, allowing the different way to do things, encouraging creativity is the positive effect of well-tuned transparency to improve corporate culture.
Digital culture is like water, encompasses all sorts of things, to keep an organization dynamic and energetic, the good culture is nourishing and fluid; the point is you can not only see the surface to know the culture, often you need to assess underneath parts to truly understand the culture. Since culture has such a large impact on individual actions and how people accomplish work, and overall strategy implementation, there is an overwhelming temptation to fiddle with cultural attributes—values, norms, and beliefs. Culture is created and shaped by a cascade of influences -just like the waves in the ocean, ride above and master it.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Every organization has a culture - defined or not. Organizational culture is the collective mindset, attitudes, and the set of behaviors, expectations, and assumptions that people have for "how things are around here." The culture of an organization is comprised of many intricate and interconnected parts, including corporate strategy and related strategic goals, job roles, business processes, core values, communications practices, corporate attitudes and business policies. Culture therefore is or ought to be very dynamic, changes constantly - like water with the following characteristics:
Flow: Digital boundaries are not "sharp" lines; they are fluid to adapt to changes, so does a digital culture. Digital culture as collective minds and attitudes have to continue to move forward, not backward; so we have to reflect and examine our own thoughts, beliefs, and actions, and we also have to have the ability to ask the hard questions and engage in meaningful dialogue even if we do not agree with one another-we can indeed agree to disagree, yet, stay engaged with one another because the dialogue is important, yet, the culture harmony is priceless. Culture is like water, permeating into every corner of your organization, influence how you think, communicate, and act. Culture is the aggregate of all employees' mindsets, attitudes, and behaviors. As such, it changes constantly as events happen and people come and go. It's not something that can be manually controlled by the employer, but culture can be changed, or even well designed, the right set of principles and rules can enable and constrain culture. Your culture guides and informs ‘How you do WHT you do, and should point you to WHY you do it.’ It’s a soft, but tough element which can harden the hardest, to lift your organization to the next level, or sink your business tragically.
‘Iceberg’ culture metaphor: The vivid metaphors for describing culture is like the visible and invisible levels of an iceberg - the solid state of ‘water.’ It is like an iceberg where the visible elements, such as behaviors, make much sense with recognizing and understanding the underlying mindsets, expectations, and assumptions. You cannot consider culture as one element of the strategy execution unless you can identify the dominant cultures, subcultures, and the layers of those cultures. Layers of culture is a critical aspect here. The iceberg metaphor well describes the layers of culture, with values and beliefs often being under the surface. It’s nearly impossible to change the culture without bringing these to the surface, articulating them and assessing whether they are still the right ones for the current environment. And that in a fast growing company people tend to have similar ideal values that then get manifested in its corporate culture. When the company then grows, this corporate culture tends to stay the same over time -the culture inertia. However, in order to move up to the next level of organizational maturity, the culture needs to be changed as well to adapt to the emerging digital trend and pulling strategy execution towards the right decision. Typically, strategy execution fails due to surprises and unknown/ unforeseen factors. If you take the visible aspects of culture -the tip of the iceberg- alone as an element of the strategy execution, you may well head into trouble. There is stereotyping and elements of ethnocentric culture as well as there is also subculture. So basically the execution and conviction of strategy strongly relies on culture.
Openness: Either a running river or a deep sea is open and nourishing for life growth. It’s not necessarily just about transparency, but the balance of visibility and invisibility; inclusiveness and dynamic. Culture is invisible, but culture can be read through employees behaviors and activities. Visibility is really important for teams as every member is always aware of how the whole process is going on, what does business culture encourage them to do, and what results have already been achieved. Water is transparent. Transparency doesn’t mean to be compliant only, or being too “direct,” too straight, or even too “rude.” Make everything clear like the water does not permit arguing. Just like the water is too pure, has no fish. No doubt about it, transparency is a fundamental factor for performance. However, a prerequisite for transparency is trust. Trust can only be built in an organizational environment conducive to the culture of learning and ideal-seeking behavior (behavior-enhancing organizational structure). Therefore, openness, allowing the different way to do things, encouraging creativity is the positive effect of well-tuned transparency to improve corporate culture.
Digital culture is like water, encompasses all sorts of things, to keep an organization dynamic and energetic, the good culture is nourishing and fluid; the point is you can not only see the surface to know the culture, often you need to assess underneath parts to truly understand the culture. Since culture has such a large impact on individual actions and how people accomplish work, and overall strategy implementation, there is an overwhelming temptation to fiddle with cultural attributes—values, norms, and beliefs. Culture is created and shaped by a cascade of influences -just like the waves in the ocean, ride above and master it.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
October 17, 2015
The Monthly Strategy Highlight of the “Future of CIO” Oct. 2015
The strategy is the light to guide you ahead, not the hand to walk you through.
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.1 million page views with about #2251th blog posting in 50+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the monthly strategy highlight of the “Future of CIO” blog.
The Monthly Strategy Highlight of the “Future of CIO” Blog Oct. 2015Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Ability to Think Strategically: There is no doubt that strategy becomes more important, not less in organizations large or small today, because of the fierce competition, rapid changes, and hyper uncertainty. Digital professionals have to continuously set up standards of competence and ability to enforce professional responsibility, with good intentions, and having capabilities to think strategically, but is there such one question to ask to determine a person’s ability to think strategically?
Strategy Design vs. Strategy Execution: Which One is More Important: The word "strategy" is pretty amorphous with so many individual interpretations and nuances of its meaning that conversations about it often go astray amidst a blizzard of the latest buzzwords. A strategy is a detailed plot to beat the competition, coauthored and in effect owned by a critical mass of thought leaders in a company. More than 70% of strategy execution fail to achieve the expected result. Is it caused by strategy or execution? Strategy design and strategy implementation, which one is more important?
Five Aspects in Digital Strategy: Digital strategy is the compass to navigate through the digital transformation journey in organizations today. So it's important to outline the strategic intent and frame the strategy to be understandable and implementable. Otherwise, people's different interpretations yield many unintended consequences. Then, it is vital to actively socialize the strategy to confirm its intent and understandability by those who will guide the implementation. Here are five aspects in crafting and implementing a digital strategy.
Vision vs. Strategy: Vision is where or who you want to be and Strategy is how you can achieve or reach your goal. An unclear vision leads to defective strategy. Visions inspire; strategies compel; vision comes first, but sometimes vision appears and gets clear by working on the strategy. A vision describes the desired future position of the company. A strategy is an action or ways chosen to bring about the desired future, such as achievement of a goal.
Digital Master Chapter III Introduction -Digital Strategy: A digital strategy is cross-functional effort and multidisciplinary, multidimensional planning; it brings up new functions, roles and responsibilities, collaboration, demand for intuition and emergence, complementarities, philosophy, neutron sciences, and trans-disciplinary businesses. But these are not new per se. The frameworks of thoughts, consciousness and maturity assessments apply to strategy, then, now and in the future.
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 #2251th blog posting in 50+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the monthly strategy highlight of the “Future of CIO” blog.
The Monthly Strategy Highlight of the “Future of CIO” Blog Oct. 2015Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Ability to Think Strategically: There is no doubt that strategy becomes more important, not less in organizations large or small today, because of the fierce competition, rapid changes, and hyper uncertainty. Digital professionals have to continuously set up standards of competence and ability to enforce professional responsibility, with good intentions, and having capabilities to think strategically, but is there such one question to ask to determine a person’s ability to think strategically?
Strategy Design vs. Strategy Execution: Which One is More Important: The word "strategy" is pretty amorphous with so many individual interpretations and nuances of its meaning that conversations about it often go astray amidst a blizzard of the latest buzzwords. A strategy is a detailed plot to beat the competition, coauthored and in effect owned by a critical mass of thought leaders in a company. More than 70% of strategy execution fail to achieve the expected result. Is it caused by strategy or execution? Strategy design and strategy implementation, which one is more important?
Five Aspects in Digital Strategy: Digital strategy is the compass to navigate through the digital transformation journey in organizations today. So it's important to outline the strategic intent and frame the strategy to be understandable and implementable. Otherwise, people's different interpretations yield many unintended consequences. Then, it is vital to actively socialize the strategy to confirm its intent and understandability by those who will guide the implementation. Here are five aspects in crafting and implementing a digital strategy.
Vision vs. Strategy: Vision is where or who you want to be and Strategy is how you can achieve or reach your goal. An unclear vision leads to defective strategy. Visions inspire; strategies compel; vision comes first, but sometimes vision appears and gets clear by working on the strategy. A vision describes the desired future position of the company. A strategy is an action or ways chosen to bring about the desired future, such as achievement of a goal.
Digital Master Chapter III Introduction -Digital Strategy: A digital strategy is cross-functional effort and multidisciplinary, multidimensional planning; it brings up new functions, roles and responsibilities, collaboration, demand for intuition and emergence, complementarities, philosophy, neutron sciences, and trans-disciplinary businesses. But these are not new per se. The frameworks of thoughts, consciousness and maturity assessments apply to strategy, then, now and in the future.
Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
How Capable is your Organization Handling Changes
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.
Change becomes fundamentally difficult in most organizations because it is treated as something distinct from running the business, evolving performance and increasing results over time. Leaders and employees are stressed enough in getting done what is right in front of them that change is layered upon becomes disruptive. However, the accelerating speed of change, the volatile and uncertain business environment make change as an ongoing capability organizations must master, so in which aspects the business should focus on to building its change ‘muscles’?
Diagnose the Root Cause to Change Resistance: The perspective that 'people resist change' has reasons. It is entirely possible that the resistance is symptomatic of a number of deeper causes, one of which is that the change has not been properly defined, aligned or considered in respect to potential undesirable effects and appropriate mitigation strategies. Mindset is very important. It can be managed through the active participation of the leadership demonstration that the mindset is a part of the culture. What is harder is for the top to create the change that they want and need. If the people affected are not involved then change can be very hard to implement. However, if the staff is involved, & they are aligned to in the right direction and then they are supported then change can be very simple and quick. Embrace the change 'Blocker' and convert blockers into champions before now and with an amazing result. helping people cope with the experience of change is fundamental to the process.
Change Leadership/management effectiveness: The issues that will prevent change from happening are likely to be the leadership vision, communication, and style. The roadblocks to change include, but not limited to lack of direction, internal politics, current culture/blame, not aligned systems/processes, too much hierarchy or centralization. This leads to lack of motivation/urgency or poor performance. This also leads to frustration, top and bottom lines not being achieved, losing market share. So much of the efforts are aimed at managing standalone "change" change efforts, where maybe underlying culture is the biggest obstacle. To paraphrase a saying " If an elephant wants to sit, I can encourage it to sit.... if it does not want to sit, there's nothing I can do to get it to." Tactically, it helps to take a complex issue that needs to be changed and break it down into easy parts and then allocate them, then it can be easy to implement to create the overall change. Because often, management are overly focused on the technological element of change, but lacking WHY and HOW to do it effectively.
Focus on problem-solving and business improvement. The complexity question differs from one organization to another. For example, a local company is less complex than a global company: a company that operates only in the U.S. would probably be less complex than one that operates in several nations. Also, if the change initiative involves customers or vendors, the effort will require more moving pieces. What else adds to complexity? Having a change model is great, but without the buy-in from the individuals that are impacted, change won’t happen or sustain. A complex problem rarely has a simple solution. 'There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong, to quote Russell Ackoff: 'The only problems that have simple solutions are simple problems. The only managers that have simple problems have simple minds. Problems that arise in organizations are almost always the product of interactions of parts, never the action of a single part. Complex problems often do not have simple solutions, some may look simple, but there are a lot of effort need to put in. So the goal is to pursue an optimal solution.
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. In today's work environment. It takes a lot of energy to break habits and out-dated thought processes, but change is happening at a more rapid pace. If you make change part of your routine, then change becomes easier to deal with.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Change becomes fundamentally difficult in most organizations because it is treated as something distinct from running the business, evolving performance and increasing results over time. Leaders and employees are stressed enough in getting done what is right in front of them that change is layered upon becomes disruptive. However, the accelerating speed of change, the volatile and uncertain business environment make change as an ongoing capability organizations must master, so in which aspects the business should focus on to building its change ‘muscles’?
Diagnose the Root Cause to Change Resistance: The perspective that 'people resist change' has reasons. It is entirely possible that the resistance is symptomatic of a number of deeper causes, one of which is that the change has not been properly defined, aligned or considered in respect to potential undesirable effects and appropriate mitigation strategies. Mindset is very important. It can be managed through the active participation of the leadership demonstration that the mindset is a part of the culture. What is harder is for the top to create the change that they want and need. If the people affected are not involved then change can be very hard to implement. However, if the staff is involved, & they are aligned to in the right direction and then they are supported then change can be very simple and quick. Embrace the change 'Blocker' and convert blockers into champions before now and with an amazing result. helping people cope with the experience of change is fundamental to the process.
Change Leadership/management effectiveness: The issues that will prevent change from happening are likely to be the leadership vision, communication, and style. The roadblocks to change include, but not limited to lack of direction, internal politics, current culture/blame, not aligned systems/processes, too much hierarchy or centralization. This leads to lack of motivation/urgency or poor performance. This also leads to frustration, top and bottom lines not being achieved, losing market share. So much of the efforts are aimed at managing standalone "change" change efforts, where maybe underlying culture is the biggest obstacle. To paraphrase a saying " If an elephant wants to sit, I can encourage it to sit.... if it does not want to sit, there's nothing I can do to get it to." Tactically, it helps to take a complex issue that needs to be changed and break it down into easy parts and then allocate them, then it can be easy to implement to create the overall change. Because often, management are overly focused on the technological element of change, but lacking WHY and HOW to do it effectively.
Focus on problem-solving and business improvement. The complexity question differs from one organization to another. For example, a local company is less complex than a global company: a company that operates only in the U.S. would probably be less complex than one that operates in several nations. Also, if the change initiative involves customers or vendors, the effort will require more moving pieces. What else adds to complexity? Having a change model is great, but without the buy-in from the individuals that are impacted, change won’t happen or sustain. A complex problem rarely has a simple solution. 'There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong, to quote Russell Ackoff: 'The only problems that have simple solutions are simple problems. The only managers that have simple problems have simple minds. Problems that arise in organizations are almost always the product of interactions of parts, never the action of a single part. Complex problems often do not have simple solutions, some may look simple, but there are a lot of effort need to put in. So the goal is to pursue an optimal solution.
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. In today's work environment. It takes a lot of energy to break habits and out-dated thought processes, but change is happening at a more rapid pace. If you make change part of your routine, then change becomes easier to deal with.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three Questions to Assess the Quality of an Employee
Unlike quantity, QUALITY is sometimes intangible, but often when you see, you know it.
Quality s the characteristic or feature that someone or something has that can be noticed as a part of a person or thing; a high level of value or excellence; peculiar and essential character, an inherent feature, etc (merriam-webster.com). We are what we think, the quality of a person is decided by the quality of his/her thinking and behavior. Here are three questions to assess the quality of a leader or an employee from talent management perspectives.
As a professional - Do you demonstrate professionalism at work and beyond: High-quality leader or employees are great in attitude, aptitude, and altitude -a winning mixture composed of character, intelligence and competence in a humble frame of self-esteem which makes aware of his/her quality without needing to show them. They must be anchored to a full professionalism; also made of personal qualities such as, independent judgment, critical thinking, professionalism and sense of responsibility and balance through which it becomes possible to earn the role of trust and guiding the organization in which they work, the respect and trust of others. and become a value constructor: These are the qualities essential to improve the quality of people's lives and the future of organizations. On the other side, unprofessionalism can take on so many forms, from backbiting to rumor mongering; from negative bullying to unhealthy competition, from low EQ to no taste, but it can also be subtle disrespect given to someone's ideas or efforts, especially when it causes harm to someone perceived value in doing their job.
Are you a clever worker or a wise professional: Find the right people through what they think and what they act. The right mindset is utmost quality for being a right fit because the power of mind is the force to change the business or even the world for better. A professional mind thinks before saying or acting: It's as simple as that. As the old saying goes, the rumor stops at a wise person. The quality leaders and employees make a positive influence on corporate culture and bring the wisdom to the workplace. The right people are the ones who possess the right mind with knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors necessary to move your business in the direction it needs to go; The have strong disciplines and soundness of judgment:. Many people do wrong things, not because of ignorance, but because of poor judgment, due to the lack of comprehensive knowledge, bias, or preconceived notions, or they lack disciplines to achieve the goals, let negative emotion pervasive, so they can’t maintain a high-quality professional brand for the long run, or even damage other’s reputation via unprofessionalism.
Are you accountable of what you are saying and what you are doing? Accountability is “the obligation of an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner.” (businessdictionary.com). To extend the definition, accountability not only means to accept the responsibility for what you DO but also what you SAY. "Holding accountable" means to overcome negative emotions and take step-wise actions. The high-quality professionals sometimes also make mistakes, noboday is perfect anyway, but they have learning attitude to overcome obstacles, and focus on solving problems, not finger pointing, and they are able to learn from every experience, understand the context, have working ethics and growth mindset, dealing with situation intelligently.
High-quality professionals look decently, think profoundly, and act thoughtfully, they are in the journey with the great attitude to learn and aptitude to grow, bring the positive aura to the working environment, refine wisdom through direct and indirect experience, and practice discipline via daily life.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Quality s the characteristic or feature that someone or something has that can be noticed as a part of a person or thing; a high level of value or excellence; peculiar and essential character, an inherent feature, etc (merriam-webster.com). We are what we think, the quality of a person is decided by the quality of his/her thinking and behavior. Here are three questions to assess the quality of a leader or an employee from talent management perspectives.
As a professional - Do you demonstrate professionalism at work and beyond: High-quality leader or employees are great in attitude, aptitude, and altitude -a winning mixture composed of character, intelligence and competence in a humble frame of self-esteem which makes aware of his/her quality without needing to show them. They must be anchored to a full professionalism; also made of personal qualities such as, independent judgment, critical thinking, professionalism and sense of responsibility and balance through which it becomes possible to earn the role of trust and guiding the organization in which they work, the respect and trust of others. and become a value constructor: These are the qualities essential to improve the quality of people's lives and the future of organizations. On the other side, unprofessionalism can take on so many forms, from backbiting to rumor mongering; from negative bullying to unhealthy competition, from low EQ to no taste, but it can also be subtle disrespect given to someone's ideas or efforts, especially when it causes harm to someone perceived value in doing their job.
Are you a clever worker or a wise professional: Find the right people through what they think and what they act. The right mindset is utmost quality for being a right fit because the power of mind is the force to change the business or even the world for better. A professional mind thinks before saying or acting: It's as simple as that. As the old saying goes, the rumor stops at a wise person. The quality leaders and employees make a positive influence on corporate culture and bring the wisdom to the workplace. The right people are the ones who possess the right mind with knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors necessary to move your business in the direction it needs to go; The have strong disciplines and soundness of judgment:. Many people do wrong things, not because of ignorance, but because of poor judgment, due to the lack of comprehensive knowledge, bias, or preconceived notions, or they lack disciplines to achieve the goals, let negative emotion pervasive, so they can’t maintain a high-quality professional brand for the long run, or even damage other’s reputation via unprofessionalism.
Are you accountable of what you are saying and what you are doing? Accountability is “the obligation of an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner.” (businessdictionary.com). To extend the definition, accountability not only means to accept the responsibility for what you DO but also what you SAY. "Holding accountable" means to overcome negative emotions and take step-wise actions. The high-quality professionals sometimes also make mistakes, noboday is perfect anyway, but they have learning attitude to overcome obstacles, and focus on solving problems, not finger pointing, and they are able to learn from every experience, understand the context, have working ethics and growth mindset, dealing with situation intelligently.
High-quality professionals look decently, think profoundly, and act thoughtfully, they are in the journey with the great attitude to learn and aptitude to grow, bring the positive aura to the working environment, refine wisdom through direct and indirect experience, and practice discipline via daily life.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three “P”s in Running a Digital IT
The purpose to orchestrate all these fundamental 'P' factors together is to achieve the other P-PERFORMANCE.
IT organizations are facing the significant digital transformation, perhaps cross-roads is an appropriate word to articulate IT position since IT seems to fall into two camps. The first is in the reactive mode to keep the light on, and take command from business, but not on the "go to" list for implementing the strategy. The latter is the proactive mode to co-create business strategy, and provide business solutions (not just IT initiatives) to achieve ultimate business goals. There is an “alphabetic soup” in running a digital IT which must lead in reaching high-level performance and maturity; besides triple “I”s - Information, Innovation, and Integration, triple “A”s - Automation, Analysis, and Agility, triple “C”s - Change, Collaboration, and Cloudification. Here, we introduce the triple “P”s in digital IT:
Principles: are general rules and guidelines, intended to be enduring and seldom amended, that inform and support the way in which an organization sets about fulfilling its mission. First, principles are statements of belief that reflect values, culture, and real-world concerns of the organization. They normally have a longer shelf life than objectives, strategies, etc. Principles are certainly there to guide the organization, not just for the professional, they are not the same as ethics; but also for decision making, governance., etc. Setting the right set of IT principles provides the general guideline for making a fair judgment and inform business decisions. Here are seven IT leadership principles we summarize to run a digital IT.
Process: is the key component to implementing a good strategy. IT is at a unique position to oversight business processes, and IT is also one of the most critical elements in process management. Process underpins business capability, and capability underpins business strategy. Business strategy relates to the high-level definition of an organization’s vision, objectives, and the key initiatives that are required to pursue those objectives given a particular starting point. Thus, process thinking needs to be a type of strategic thinking, holistic, end to end and with a strong focus on business goals set by strategy. The strategy tells you what processes you should focus on, because they are strategic to the company. It also tells you whether you are redesigning business processes to achieve changes in time, cost, quality or scope. Which of these have you decided in the strategy that is most important to the competitive advantage? To keep process nimble, IT needs to prune “the weed” regularly: The approach is to implement a program that like a gardener would prune the tree and nurture the valuable solutions. Pruning the weeds would face resistance, keeping “IT Fit” takes both strategy and discipline, but it is worth the effort, and it is a significant step to transform IT from a cost center to value creator; from a controller always saying “NO” to the innovator that brings change to itself as well as business-wide scope, and from a big fat silo to the digital fit brain of modern organization.
People: Last but not least, PEOPLE. As the matter of fact, the right order is alway: First People – Then Process – Then Technology. Develop and nurture a high-performing IT team is the first priority for IT leaders. Strive to be leaner and more business-focused. According to industry surveys, IT skills gap is a significant challenge facing IT leaders today. The right talent is the one that has demonstrated he/she can solve complex problems. Businesses become over-complex these days, more often than not, the skills gap is caused by candidates not having the appropriate balance of the right technical skills with business/management acumen, or lack of Systems, Critical, and Creative Thinking, interpersonal skills, as at the end of the day, it all means how to solve business problems. The bottom line is: realistic expectations and focuses on fit, career development, and succession planning will go a long way to recruiting and retaining employees with the right attitude and aptitude to adapt to changing requirements. The value of your contributions and your ability to deliver value is frequently more important than technical expertise. IT people are accustomed to having to learn new things. If companies would embrace the idea of constant learning and invest in it, and really encourage learning instead of giving it lip service, there would be no skills gap.
The purpose to orchestrate all these fundamental business elements (people, process, and technology) together is to achieve the other P-PERFORMANCE. Distinguish between quantitative and qualitative performance objectives/KPIs. KPIs and the associated metrics drive priorities and behaviors. Keep them focused on drivers of performance and, appropriately weighted. The performance KPI setting shall focus on achieving the ultimate goals of business as a whole.
The Alphabetic Soup to Run a Digital IT:
Three "P"s in Running a Digital IT
Three "I"s in Running a Digital IT
Three "C"s in Running a Digital IT
Triple "A"s in Running a Digital IT
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
IT organizations are facing the significant digital transformation, perhaps cross-roads is an appropriate word to articulate IT position since IT seems to fall into two camps. The first is in the reactive mode to keep the light on, and take command from business, but not on the "go to" list for implementing the strategy. The latter is the proactive mode to co-create business strategy, and provide business solutions (not just IT initiatives) to achieve ultimate business goals. There is an “alphabetic soup” in running a digital IT which must lead in reaching high-level performance and maturity; besides triple “I”s - Information, Innovation, and Integration, triple “A”s - Automation, Analysis, and Agility, triple “C”s - Change, Collaboration, and Cloudification. Here, we introduce the triple “P”s in digital IT:
Principles: are general rules and guidelines, intended to be enduring and seldom amended, that inform and support the way in which an organization sets about fulfilling its mission. First, principles are statements of belief that reflect values, culture, and real-world concerns of the organization. They normally have a longer shelf life than objectives, strategies, etc. Principles are certainly there to guide the organization, not just for the professional, they are not the same as ethics; but also for decision making, governance., etc. Setting the right set of IT principles provides the general guideline for making a fair judgment and inform business decisions. Here are seven IT leadership principles we summarize to run a digital IT.
Process: is the key component to implementing a good strategy. IT is at a unique position to oversight business processes, and IT is also one of the most critical elements in process management. Process underpins business capability, and capability underpins business strategy. Business strategy relates to the high-level definition of an organization’s vision, objectives, and the key initiatives that are required to pursue those objectives given a particular starting point. Thus, process thinking needs to be a type of strategic thinking, holistic, end to end and with a strong focus on business goals set by strategy. The strategy tells you what processes you should focus on, because they are strategic to the company. It also tells you whether you are redesigning business processes to achieve changes in time, cost, quality or scope. Which of these have you decided in the strategy that is most important to the competitive advantage? To keep process nimble, IT needs to prune “the weed” regularly: The approach is to implement a program that like a gardener would prune the tree and nurture the valuable solutions. Pruning the weeds would face resistance, keeping “IT Fit” takes both strategy and discipline, but it is worth the effort, and it is a significant step to transform IT from a cost center to value creator; from a controller always saying “NO” to the innovator that brings change to itself as well as business-wide scope, and from a big fat silo to the digital fit brain of modern organization.
People: Last but not least, PEOPLE. As the matter of fact, the right order is alway: First People – Then Process – Then Technology. Develop and nurture a high-performing IT team is the first priority for IT leaders. Strive to be leaner and more business-focused. According to industry surveys, IT skills gap is a significant challenge facing IT leaders today. The right talent is the one that has demonstrated he/she can solve complex problems. Businesses become over-complex these days, more often than not, the skills gap is caused by candidates not having the appropriate balance of the right technical skills with business/management acumen, or lack of Systems, Critical, and Creative Thinking, interpersonal skills, as at the end of the day, it all means how to solve business problems. The bottom line is: realistic expectations and focuses on fit, career development, and succession planning will go a long way to recruiting and retaining employees with the right attitude and aptitude to adapt to changing requirements. The value of your contributions and your ability to deliver value is frequently more important than technical expertise. IT people are accustomed to having to learn new things. If companies would embrace the idea of constant learning and invest in it, and really encourage learning instead of giving it lip service, there would be no skills gap.The purpose to orchestrate all these fundamental business elements (people, process, and technology) together is to achieve the other P-PERFORMANCE. Distinguish between quantitative and qualitative performance objectives/KPIs. KPIs and the associated metrics drive priorities and behaviors. Keep them focused on drivers of performance and, appropriately weighted. The performance KPI setting shall focus on achieving the ultimate goals of business as a whole.
The Alphabetic Soup to Run a Digital IT:
Three "P"s in Running a Digital IT
Three "I"s in Running a Digital IT
Three "C"s in Running a Digital IT
Triple "A"s in Running a Digital IT
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three “P”s in Running Digital IT
The purpose to orchestrate all these fundamental 'P' factors together is to achieve the other P-PERFORMANCE.
IT organizations are facing the significant digital transformation, perhaps cross-roads is an appropriate word to articulate IT position since IT seems to fall into two camps. The first is in the reactive mode to keep the light on, and take command from business, but not on the "go to" list for implementing the strategy. The latter is the proactive mode to co-create business strategy, and provide business solutions (not just IT initiatives) to achieve ultimate business goals. There is an “alphabetic soup” in running a digital IT which must lead in reaching high-level performance and maturity; besides triple “I”s - Information, Innovation, and Integration, triple “A”s - Automation, Analysis, and Agility, triple “C”s - Change, Collaboration, and Cloudification. Here, we introduce the triple “P”s in digital IT:
Principles: are general rules and guidelines, intended to be enduring and seldom amended, that inform and support the way in which an organization sets about fulfilling its mission. First, principles are statements of belief that reflect values, culture, and real-world concerns of the organization. They normally have a longer shelf life than objectives, strategies, etc. Principles are certainly there to guide the organization, not just for the professional, they are not the same as ethics; but also for decision making, governance., etc. Setting the right set of IT principles provides the general guideline for making a fair judgment and inform business decisions. Here are seven IT leadership principles we summarize to run a digital IT.
Process: is the key component to implementing a good strategy. IT is at a unique position to oversight business processes, and IT is also one of the most critical elements in process management. Process underpins business capability, and capability underpins business strategy. Business strategy relates to the high-level definition of an organization’s vision, objectives, and the key initiatives that are required to pursue those objectives given a particular starting point. Thus, process thinking needs to be a type of strategic thinking, holistic, end to end and with a strong focus on business goals set by strategy. The strategy tells you what processes you should focus on, because they are strategic to the company. It also tells you whether you are redesigning business processes to achieve changes in time, cost, quality or scope. Which of these have you decided in the strategy that is most important to the competitive advantage? To keep process nimble, IT needs to prune “the weed” regularly: The approach is to implement a program that like a gardener would prune the tree and nurture the valuable solutions. Pruning the weeds would face resistance, keeping “IT Fit” takes both strategy and discipline, but it is worth the effort, and it is a significant step to transform IT from a cost center to value creator; from a controller always saying “NO” to the innovator that brings change to itself as well as business-wide scope, and from a big fat silo to the digital fit brain of modern organization.
People: Last but not least, PEOPLE. As the matter of fact, the right order is alway: First People – Then Process – Then Technology. Develop and nurture a high-performing IT team is the first priority for IT leaders. Strive to be leaner and more business-focused. According to industry surveys, IT skills gap is a significant challenge facing IT leaders today. The right talent is the one that has demonstrated he/she can solve complex problems. Businesses become over-complex these days, more often than not, the skills gap is caused by candidates not having the appropriate balance of the right technical skills with business/management acumen, or lack of Systems, Critical, and Creative Thinking, interpersonal skills, as at the end of the day, it all means how to solve business problems. The bottom line is: realistic expectations and focuses on fit, career development, and succession planning will go a long way to recruiting and retaining employees with the right attitude and aptitude to adapt to changing requirements. The value of your contributions and your ability to deliver value is frequently more important than technical expertise. IT people are accustomed to having to learn new things. If companies would embrace the idea of constant learning and invest in it, and really encourage learning instead of giving it lip service, there would be no skills gap.The purpose to orchestrate all these fundamental business elements (people, process, and technology) together is to achieve the other P-PERFORMANCE. Distinguish between quantitative and qualitative performance objectives/KPIs. KPIs and the associated
metrics drive priorities and behaviors. Keep them focused on drivers of performance and, appropriately weighted. The performance KPI setting shall focus on achieving the ultimate goals of business as a whole.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
IT organizations are facing the significant digital transformation, perhaps cross-roads is an appropriate word to articulate IT position since IT seems to fall into two camps. The first is in the reactive mode to keep the light on, and take command from business, but not on the "go to" list for implementing the strategy. The latter is the proactive mode to co-create business strategy, and provide business solutions (not just IT initiatives) to achieve ultimate business goals. There is an “alphabetic soup” in running a digital IT which must lead in reaching high-level performance and maturity; besides triple “I”s - Information, Innovation, and Integration, triple “A”s - Automation, Analysis, and Agility, triple “C”s - Change, Collaboration, and Cloudification. Here, we introduce the triple “P”s in digital IT:
Principles: are general rules and guidelines, intended to be enduring and seldom amended, that inform and support the way in which an organization sets about fulfilling its mission. First, principles are statements of belief that reflect values, culture, and real-world concerns of the organization. They normally have a longer shelf life than objectives, strategies, etc. Principles are certainly there to guide the organization, not just for the professional, they are not the same as ethics; but also for decision making, governance., etc. Setting the right set of IT principles provides the general guideline for making a fair judgment and inform business decisions. Here are seven IT leadership principles we summarize to run a digital IT.
Process: is the key component to implementing a good strategy. IT is at a unique position to oversight business processes, and IT is also one of the most critical elements in process management. Process underpins business capability, and capability underpins business strategy. Business strategy relates to the high-level definition of an organization’s vision, objectives, and the key initiatives that are required to pursue those objectives given a particular starting point. Thus, process thinking needs to be a type of strategic thinking, holistic, end to end and with a strong focus on business goals set by strategy. The strategy tells you what processes you should focus on, because they are strategic to the company. It also tells you whether you are redesigning business processes to achieve changes in time, cost, quality or scope. Which of these have you decided in the strategy that is most important to the competitive advantage? To keep process nimble, IT needs to prune “the weed” regularly: The approach is to implement a program that like a gardener would prune the tree and nurture the valuable solutions. Pruning the weeds would face resistance, keeping “IT Fit” takes both strategy and discipline, but it is worth the effort, and it is a significant step to transform IT from a cost center to value creator; from a controller always saying “NO” to the innovator that brings change to itself as well as business-wide scope, and from a big fat silo to the digital fit brain of modern organization.
People: Last but not least, PEOPLE. As the matter of fact, the right order is alway: First People – Then Process – Then Technology. Develop and nurture a high-performing IT team is the first priority for IT leaders. Strive to be leaner and more business-focused. According to industry surveys, IT skills gap is a significant challenge facing IT leaders today. The right talent is the one that has demonstrated he/she can solve complex problems. Businesses become over-complex these days, more often than not, the skills gap is caused by candidates not having the appropriate balance of the right technical skills with business/management acumen, or lack of Systems, Critical, and Creative Thinking, interpersonal skills, as at the end of the day, it all means how to solve business problems. The bottom line is: realistic expectations and focuses on fit, career development, and succession planning will go a long way to recruiting and retaining employees with the right attitude and aptitude to adapt to changing requirements. The value of your contributions and your ability to deliver value is frequently more important than technical expertise. IT people are accustomed to having to learn new things. If companies would embrace the idea of constant learning and invest in it, and really encourage learning instead of giving it lip service, there would be no skills gap.The purpose to orchestrate all these fundamental business elements (people, process, and technology) together is to achieve the other P-PERFORMANCE. Distinguish between quantitative and qualitative performance objectives/KPIs. KPIs and the associatedmetrics drive priorities and behaviors. Keep them focused on drivers of performance and, appropriately weighted. The performance KPI setting shall focus on achieving the ultimate goals of business as a whole.
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October 16, 2015
CIOs as Chief Improvement Officer: How to Make Accurate Estimate in Agile
Regardless of the method used, the most important thing with estimating is that it becomes more and more accurate the more you use it.
Many organizations are shifting from Waterfall to Agile mode. Agile does not take less discipline but needs more engineering and management discipline. Practically, Agile means short release cycle and better customer satisfaction. Technically, Agile needs to break down a large project into small blocks, in order to management it effectively, which estimate tools or methods do you prefer to use in Agile?
In Agile environments, there are two main estimate techniques: Fibonacci and Hours. It’s worth mentioning that Agile teams estimate tasks only in hours. Tasks are parts of a User Story; something very small that should take a couple of hours or so—definitely no longer than a day to complete. The larger the task, the lower the chance of estimating the exact number of hours associated with delivery. Estimating in Fibonacci is an Agile estimation technique that uses attributes. Fabiaschi numbers are example of an exponential estimation scale while multiple people work on estimation in parallel, it limits the team on possibilities to break down a task equally into smaller tasks. Fibonacci is associated with Story Point Estimation (using Story Points to estimate larger pieces of work). Story points are used to estimate larger pieces of work ( User Stories and Epics).
As the size of work increases, accuracy in estimation increases. In Fibonacci series, the difference in number keeps on increases. A lot of teams also use geometric series (like 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, …) instead of Fibonacci numbers.There are two main reasons for using Fibonacci; you get to choose whether it's a good idea in your context. Secondly the size between the buckets is proportional and gives a fairly good match to the differential in size that's both easy to calculate and sufficiently accurate. So while some people use the 'doubling' method, Fibonacci gives you a bit more precision without losing any significant accuracy. Because it's much easier to accurately estimate small tasks and the larger they are it gets increasingly more difficult to be as accurate. That's why Fibonacci works so well for story estimates in agile since the estimate range increases as the estimate gets larger.
Select the estimate tool you feel comfortable with via practicing, practicing, and practicing. In the beginning, new teams will get it wrong by over or under estimating. This is perfectly normal. Like anything new, it’s important to stick with it long enough to determine if the method will work or not and will probably be something to discuss at the sprint retrospective. Some recommend new teams starting with a simple system whilst they learn and as they become more proficient the method they use can become more complex. Fibonacci sequence is used because, as the estimates become bigger so does the bucket size. Use Fibonacci, use exponential, use an arbitrary time-based scale, it doesn't matter that much in the long run. Once you complete stories you have real data, so set yourself up to react to real information as quick as possible without inferring more into your sizing than you should.
Growth in size jumps in time. In most cases, this doesn't take an hour, but takes two, something that doesn't take a 3 days, but takes a week. The size of work does not grow linearly to time spend on it for many reasons, psychologically and sometimes just how complexities compound the larger the work gets. At the end of the day, there are no rules about what system to use to estimate. The team can use whatever works best for them. Most agile teams are likely to experiment with different methods after researching what others are doing or based on the experiences of those in the team. Regardless of the method used, the most important thing with estimating is that it becomes more and more accurate the more you use it.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Many organizations are shifting from Waterfall to Agile mode. Agile does not take less discipline but needs more engineering and management discipline. Practically, Agile means short release cycle and better customer satisfaction. Technically, Agile needs to break down a large project into small blocks, in order to management it effectively, which estimate tools or methods do you prefer to use in Agile?
In Agile environments, there are two main estimate techniques: Fibonacci and Hours. It’s worth mentioning that Agile teams estimate tasks only in hours. Tasks are parts of a User Story; something very small that should take a couple of hours or so—definitely no longer than a day to complete. The larger the task, the lower the chance of estimating the exact number of hours associated with delivery. Estimating in Fibonacci is an Agile estimation technique that uses attributes. Fabiaschi numbers are example of an exponential estimation scale while multiple people work on estimation in parallel, it limits the team on possibilities to break down a task equally into smaller tasks. Fibonacci is associated with Story Point Estimation (using Story Points to estimate larger pieces of work). Story points are used to estimate larger pieces of work ( User Stories and Epics).
As the size of work increases, accuracy in estimation increases. In Fibonacci series, the difference in number keeps on increases. A lot of teams also use geometric series (like 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, …) instead of Fibonacci numbers.There are two main reasons for using Fibonacci; you get to choose whether it's a good idea in your context. Secondly the size between the buckets is proportional and gives a fairly good match to the differential in size that's both easy to calculate and sufficiently accurate. So while some people use the 'doubling' method, Fibonacci gives you a bit more precision without losing any significant accuracy. Because it's much easier to accurately estimate small tasks and the larger they are it gets increasingly more difficult to be as accurate. That's why Fibonacci works so well for story estimates in agile since the estimate range increases as the estimate gets larger.
Select the estimate tool you feel comfortable with via practicing, practicing, and practicing. In the beginning, new teams will get it wrong by over or under estimating. This is perfectly normal. Like anything new, it’s important to stick with it long enough to determine if the method will work or not and will probably be something to discuss at the sprint retrospective. Some recommend new teams starting with a simple system whilst they learn and as they become more proficient the method they use can become more complex. Fibonacci sequence is used because, as the estimates become bigger so does the bucket size. Use Fibonacci, use exponential, use an arbitrary time-based scale, it doesn't matter that much in the long run. Once you complete stories you have real data, so set yourself up to react to real information as quick as possible without inferring more into your sizing than you should.
Growth in size jumps in time. In most cases, this doesn't take an hour, but takes two, something that doesn't take a 3 days, but takes a week. The size of work does not grow linearly to time spend on it for many reasons, psychologically and sometimes just how complexities compound the larger the work gets. At the end of the day, there are no rules about what system to use to estimate. The team can use whatever works best for them. Most agile teams are likely to experiment with different methods after researching what others are doing or based on the experiences of those in the team. Regardless of the method used, the most important thing with estimating is that it becomes more and more accurate the more you use it.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
