Creativity is a function of imagination, knowledge, psychology, activities, and evaluation. 

People do have their own set of beliefs and practices, which is called as Conventional Mind. And they have the right to live with the same mindset. With age, they tend to become risk-averse, so they have a tendency to stick to conventional wisdom. But when you need creative ideas, you often need to play innovation oddball by practicing anti-conventional thinking. Unconventional wisdom often means fresh insight or “out-of-the-box” thinking by breaking through the conventional mindset.

Conventional wisdom has a negative connotation about sticking to the outdated concepts, traditions, cultures, or the old ways to do things: Often at the static society with the scarce knowledge and traditional cultures, such as primitively agricultural society or even the industrial age, most people usually consider conventional to be wise, and unconventional to be unwise. So, from one generation to the other generation, people keep preaching with the age-old knowledge, though some of which are perhaps already outdated sooner than you know. Nowadays, with the much faster pace of changes and exponential growth of information, today’s digital society with knowledge economy and much-advanced technology needs to embrace the open culture and keep information and mind flow. Conventional wisdom usually has a negative connotation about sticking to the outdated concepts, traditions, cultures, or the old ways to do things, it’s anti-creativity. With being called conventional wisdom, organizations or the society keep nurturing mediocrity and unrealistically keep expecting innovation out of that mediocrity. The same mediocrity is inherited down the line by generations. That actually only impede innovation and collective human progress. Some crisis situations, often with more frequent digital disruptions, will require innovative process; where a conventional style would be troublesome. Thus, an innovative mind should practice anti-conventional thinking, see things differently and do things in a different way.


Creativity is about thinking beyond conventional wisdom: Conventional thinking often refers to “in-the-box” thinking, which is opposite to the “out-of-box” creative thinking. Creative thinking is unique and original, many other types of thinking are not; some are the habit, following, repetition of memory, emotional reaction, social conformity, approval seeking, dogmatism, pedanticism, or mendacity. The conventional mind is bound by its beliefs and general practices, it perhaps works in the considerably static industrial age. But with rapid changes and frequent disruptions today, the issue is that with the conventional mind, you expect unconventional results, this is like walking on the treadmill, keep walking around without real progress. Creativity appears to be beyond the conventional thinking - where you have left the confines of other people's thoughts. You have to be determined to get better results somehow and it will help to try unconventional thinking, practices, with a better result. Practicing anti-conventional thinking takes a certain mental, psychological and conditional chemistry to break away from thoughts that others have thought about or conventional wisdom. It takes courage, but it is a necessary step to spark creativity and make the true progress.

The logical mind is not equal to a conventional thinking, it can be creative as well: In fact, conventional thinking is not always logical, and the logical mind is more structured in the solution hunt, whereas the innovative mind is faster to test new untested areas. The mature thinker with a logical or structural style will first approach the problem from all possible conventional methods, identify problem areas, choose solutions and move forward. But when all known avenues have been thought through, that the logical mind will start the out-of-the-box thinking. This is a far more stable method in most situations. Thus, the logical mind can be also creative when necessary to play the innovation oddball skillfully. Innovation often means to mix something new with old. the ideal scenario is a judicious and mature mix of both styles - logic and creativity; or conventional and unconventional way. To apply balance would require a very high level of awareness. This is about cognitive maturity and discernment. Ideally, an organization will, by choice, build a mix of styles in the optimal proportion as dictated by its realities and its industry.

It takes courage and mental toughness to break through conventional wisdom. It takes persistence and determination to practice unconventional thinking. Creativity is a function of imagination, knowledge, psychology, activities, and evaluation. Either conventional or unconventional thinking, the true wisdom leads to putting more thoughts into things and searching for fresh ideas and widens the possibility of coming up with alternative solutions and solve thorny problems effortlessly.

Building the bridge between today and the future requires enthusiasm, belief, determination, hard capabilities, soft touches, and commit to a more responsive way of working in general.

Organizations across the industrial sectors are on the journey of digitalization. Being “digital ready” goes beyond just applying the latest digital technology, it is a holistic effort and multifaceted discipline. The digital transformation has to be expanded in every dimension and permeating into underlying organizational structures and functions. Besides hard forces such as technology update or process optimization, organizations also have to tailor their management styles by making some “soft touch,” well mix all important business elements into the organizational competency.

Intuition or gut feeling still has a role in making better choices or faster decisions: On one side, organizations rely more & more on hard data in running a real-time digital organization. On the other side though, with unprecedented uncertainty and complexity, some courageous digital leaders choose to follow their gut feeling or their intuition, and taste success. It is not because they are emotional or spontaneous, but because they let the inner feeling flow, they are able to apply the awareness and intelligence to make better choices, not any choice. From a neurological perspective, the human brain can process huge amounts of information unconsciously without it ever rising into consciousness. Intuition is one element for our unconscious process which is created out of our distilled experiences. The more conscious we grow, the more aligned we become with our intuition. This is why intuitive decision making can be powerful and should not be underestimated. It is often used when there is a high level of uncertainty. It means that there is little precedent to go on, when the ‘risks‘ are less predictable and when “facts” are limited. Guidance comes from within, but, very rarely would anyone depend on intuition or listen to the inner calling. It requires a lot of courage. That makes seemly soft “gut feeling” like the diamond in rough, precious and invaluable to make better choices or faster decisions.

Change Management is considered as a “soft” management discipline: Because there is no hard formula to manage changes and change itself keep changing. In fact, the soft forces such as leadership and communication will become the key factors for the success of changes. Digital is the era of people. There is the psychology behind the change. People’s feelings need to be addressed. Often, people have no problem with change! They have problems with uncertainty, risk, and fear. People respond in different ways to different situations. It would be great for change practitioners to have a reasonably good understanding of neuroscience. They need to have good critical thinking skills, the high level of adaptability, excellent communication and engagement skills to leverage the crucial "soft touch" for managing the emotion cycle behind changes. Part of creating an organizational environment that facilitates change involves paying attention to employee wellbeing and building individual emotional resilience to generate more positive emotions and reducing unnecessary organizational pressures for taking the digital journey effortlessly.

The “aqua” like soft business elements such as culture plays a decisive role in leading change success: People have been the very real for changes, the driving force of the digital transformation, and of much of what mankind has accomplished. Culture defines people's attitude and the organization's process. and then, if there's no culture of execution, there would be no positive attitude and no good behavior. Successful strategy management and a successful culture are interdependent. The degree to which culture supports a strategy depends on upon the degree to which culture unifies its efforts to realize critical success factors, and thus implement successful strategies. Culture unifies different groups of people. First, you have to build a company culture that encourages staffs to think of new strategies to be implemented, and then, you've got to define a process to improve this idea by stimulating the development of it; and then, you have to define the metrics to measure the success of the strategy, whether it's a strategy concerning growth, or employees satisfaction or clients satisfaction. Culture is soft, but one of the most critical success factors to support strategy execution and make a leap of the digital transformation.

There is no magic formula or prescribed solution to digital transformation. Building the bridge between today and the future requires enthusiasm, belief, determination, hard capabilities, soft touches, and commit to a more responsive way of working in general. Mastering the soft elements well makes the business more adaptable to the dynamic environment, deal with change frictions, ride above change curves, and reach the inflection point of the digital transformation.

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. But what are digital organizational traits, how to define digital fit and take a structural approach for digitalization?

 Either individually or collectively, we should keep expanding our thinking box, gaining fresh knowledge, and accumulating new experiences.

In the industrial age, the overly rigid hierarchy is often the cause of organizational bureaucracy and leads to business stagnation. With overwhelming growth of information and emerging digital technology, the black and white boundaries continue to diminish in the 21st century due to the occurrence of increased economic integration, characterized by the movement of people with diverse background across geographical borders and the wider communication empowered by advanced digital platforms and technology. To inspire creativity and drive change, digital organizations need to harness the cross-functional collaboration by expanding business boundaries and playing innovation oddball skillfully.


The digital boundary is not the sharp line for dividing but like the fluid wave for enforcing mutual understanding and fostering innovation: Boundaries is indeed a very broad term that encompasses all sorts of things, strict or fluid; boundaries can be good, bad, or indifferent depending on the application. On the one side, the boundary is a space for learning, an opportunity to examine our own thoughts, beliefs, and actions. On the other side, many come to believe that boundaries are not tangible places of resistance but are self-imposed limitations we place on ourselves to hide our own fear to move forward. To solve many of today’s complex problems creatively, people often need to think out-of-the-box or in the bigger box, work cross-disciplinarily, to put another way, expand the boundaries to allow their mind flow, and thus idea flow. Expanding the boundary is about learning and gaining new knowledge continuously, being open to different thoughts, beliefs or alternative to do things. It’s to experience what it is like to agree to disagree and still remain engaged; scrutinize your own perceptions, identify blind spots, recognize that you are responsible for promoting or dissolving your own thoughts, emotions, and actions, embrace the emerging changes and the new reality.

The digital boundary is fluid and the digital business structure is interrelational to connect the dots: We are living in a complex world where inventions, developments, and conflicts are continuously changing and that makes it impossible to have a complete knowledge and understanding of many issues. Digital organizations blur the functional, geographical, and even the industrial borders. The dynamic processes with expanded business boundaries enable information, knowledge, and idea flow by reducing tensions, frictions, and conflicts that arise, and help to develop the culture of learning and innovation. The digital organizational structure is interrelational to connect the dots and the business management practices need to be interactive. The management processes should be developed to help communicate objects and concepts smoothly. The expanded boundaries encourage open mind, open space and open leadership. The harmony is priceless. We do not have to agree with one another in order to learn from and with one another. We all bring different perspectives and our boundaries might have changed based on open conversations and taking the time to thoughtfully think about the specific issue of boundaries. Being creative is not just about "knowledgeable" - because they are often at the edge of things and able to expands the boundaries of knowledge or conventional thinking, and through such expansions, the new knowledge is developed. So the expanded boundary amplifies the collective potential to innovate.


The horizontal connectivity within the organization enables information and idea flow: Organizations need to be loose to deal with the high business velocity and rapid changes. Silo builds the wall and creates the barriers to communication and collaboration. To continuously innovate within organizations, individuals and groups need to connect and communicate more openly, frequently and effectively. The expanded boundary enable idea flow. Ideas are seeds of creativity that can change a certain situation and future. There is more flow of creative ideas, the more is happening, the innovation pie gets bigger. The digital organization builds many innovation clusters which are cross-functional communities help to brainstorm fresh ideas or exchange knowledge. From the management perspective, expand boundaries to allow cross-pollination of ideas, offer people ownership and responsibilities in what they do, with the ultimate goals of transforming ideas to achieve the business value.

Nowadays, the oceans or mountains cannot stop us from communication or collaboration. Still, there is much in the world we do not know nor understand and because of that limitation, we need to choose to continue to learn, grow and empower people to learn and grow too. Therefore, either individually or collectively, we should keep expanding our thinking box, gaining fresh knowledge, and accumulating new experiences. People are ready for moving to a fluid structure and working for boundaryless digital organizations. Digital leaders are eager to set stages for playing the innovation oddball skillfully and expanding the multitude of boundaries for opening the next page of digital innovation playbook.

Digital CIOs lead through influence, not through command & control. 

Organizations of the future are increasingly exhibiting digital characteristics in various shades, colors, extensiveness, and intensity. IT is the linchpin of running a digital business. The modern CIOs play a crucial role in driving changes and leading digitalization. The degree of leadership influence is much more complex than the leader’s title or personality. Highly effective CIOs are independent thinkers, unbiased communicators, flexible managers, and relentless change agents.
They need to have the ability to “calibrate their impact,” being able to lead through influence, not by brute forces.

Digital CIOs who have developed influential competence seek to understand the mindset of all related parties: Digital CIOs are the top business executives who need to make the leadership influence across the entire company and even the business ecosystem. IT leaders should be open and listen to their own staff for discussing critical issues, they also should listen to customers, business partners, or other stakeholders carefully. They need to be able to recognize the priorities and struggles of the company by understanding the business beyond IT. The overwhelming growth of information and continuous technology evolution means that CIOs should be empowered to lead changes and drive digital transformation proactively; IT can be the change agent by experiment withing better solutions to either existing or emerging problems because the latest digital technologies, platforms, and tools provide great opportunities for improving cross-functional communication and collaboration to harness innovation. IT leaders not only manage IT groups but also work to integrate IT into the business and present the strategic value proposition. The maturity level of the CIO position is the impact they have made on others, and hence, their reputation as well as their leadership achievement. The digital CIOs with self-awareness can recognize the impact they are having; taking full responsibility for that impact, and modifying it in real-time to align with the impact they are intending to have.

Digital CIOs have to practice innovation influence via envisioning and sharing technological perspectives and driving innovation: Digital IT is a paradigm shift in role, responsibility, and attitude. CIOs have to know how to play the crystal ball because vision is particularly important for CIOs due to the changing nature of technology, and because nowadays information and technology are often the game changer to either leap and fail the business even overnight. In the face of “VUCA” digital new normal, there are a lot of opportunities for CIOs to raise their intellectual voice for clarifying the role of IT in business innovation. A CIO’s technological vision should be attainable subject to current times and its ability to adapt to changing times and help the business gain a competitive advantage for the long term. Innovation happens at the intersection of people and technology. CIOs definitely should calibrate their impact on achieving the “art of possible.” They need to refine information to capture the business insight of growth opportunities or customer insight. They need to encourage creativity and constructive criticism to build a highly innovative working environment. They should not only put stress on “having the knowledge,” bot even more critically, “developing the new knowledge,” to break down constraints and overcome the numerous obstacles for unleashing the full digital potential of the business.


Digital CIOs who practice the expert power can make leadership influence more profound and empathetic: The pace of changes in IT would force more CIOs to shift into transformation-oriented digital leadership roles because IT plays a significant role in driving the digitalization of the company. To lead today’s technology-savvy workforce effectively, digital IT leaders can calibrate their impact based on their interdisciplinary knowledge, unique insight and practicing the expert power accordingly. Now more often the business is inextricably connected with technology, and the functional barriers are starting to weaken, allowing digital leaders and professionals to pursue their aspirations and to apply their skills and expertise to their greatest effect. The digital CIO is a trusted advisor to the board, a strategic partner of the business, a problem-solver for customers; and a mentor for IT staffs. In fact, an interdisciplinary CIO with proficient leadership influence and systems thinking skills to understand the business as a system is a necessary precondition to deal with the mountain of information by leveraging efficient technological tools and human know-how, lead changes in a structural way and make continuous deliveries.

Digital CIOs lead through influence, not through command & control. Overall speaking, they should play position influence, expertise influence, and social influence to improve their leadership effectiveness and calibrate their impact,. The digital CIOs are in demand to “disrupt,” inspire, change and innovate. They are not static IT managers but dynamic digital leaders.

The connectivity in a digital business setting will have more antennae focused on the emergent business trends and foresee what’s going to happen and well prepare for the tide of changes.

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. Digital Master refers to those high-performing, highly innovative and high-mature (less than 15%) digital organizations; they have both clear digital vision and well-crafted digital strategy; they are courageous to be in the vanguard of digital transformation with a quantum lead. Digital leaders must realize that you cannot wait until there is an immediate pressing task, continuous adaptability is necessary in an ever-changing world, in order to run a future-driven digital organization.

    

Set a Viable Path to Go Digital  

Set a Viable Path to Shape the Impulse of the Digital Organization The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves. The emergence of potential opportunities for exploring digitization is likely to follow a nonlinear pattern with exponential speed. Going digital means that you have to strike the right balance between chaos and order, stability and changes, and set a viable path to shape the impulse of a digital organization.

Explore Blue Ocean and Shape Digital Organization? Digitalization makes a profound impact from a specific function to the business as a whole, building an organization of the future is not too far away. Digital organizations are hyperconnected and interdependent. They need to have an in-depth understanding of gains and pains of organizational design and development. They should also renew themselves periodically to cope with the change effectively to the best of their ability. Heralding an ecological digital organization need to emphasize participation, relationships, communication, and collaboration and unlock business performance and potential continually.

Fine-Tune a Vital Digital Organization? The digital transformation means that companies need to infuse digital into every aspect of the business, expand to every dimension of the organization. Forward-thinking organizations today aim to move into a more advanced stage of digital deployment by tailoring their own unique strength and business maturity. They need to have both interdisciplinary knowledge and in-depth understanding of the organizational hyperconnectivity and interdependence in order to optimize organizational structures, improve business strategic responsiveness and fine-tune a vital digital organization.

Take a Fast Track of Going Digital Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way the business is conducted. The organizations that have hit the heights of success in the digital world aren’t those that have determinedly followed the old models and ways of thinking or industry best practices; it’s those that have forged a new path and develop their own next practices to move forward. To take a fast track of going digital, it’s necessary for companies to perform an organizational change impact assessment to understand the current state factors, and then, determine what the impacts, risks, and challenges of any proposed change are. The bigger the change initiative is, the more important to take these into account early rather than late in order to lead change steadfastly.

Taking a Portfolio Approach to Go Digitally? Digitalization is a radical change. The connectivity in a digital business setting will have more antennae focused on the emergent business trends and foresee what’s going to happen and well prepare for the tide of changes. The successful businesses are the ones that can manage change fluently in a structural way. The purpose to take a portfolio approach to go digital is to “run, grow, and transform business” accordingly.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.8 million page views with about 5200+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.

Be skeptical, be inquisitive, be creative; and apply real critical thinking to practice meta-leadership at the corporate board level.

Meta-leadership is simply about the leadership of the leadership. The board of directors is the senior leadership role in steering organizational towards the right directions and overseeing the business management effectiveness and maturity. Digital leadership is the adventure to explore unknown, and have confidence and insight for taking the right path of reaching the destination. Developing the meta-board to practice meta-leadership is important because the journey of digitalization requires working cross boxes instead within the box; going broader and digging deeper into the “meta” level of management disciplines for getting the business digital ready.

Digging into metacognition to improve leadership maturity: Metacognition is about the thinking of thinking. Which thought processes do people apply to come up with their understanding of things or people? Or what methodologies or practices can they use to improve their thinking capability? In today’s “VUCA” new normal, organizations and human society will be confronting a number of high-complex problems in the hyper-connected world, digging into metacognitive level helps to solve problems from mindset level, eliminate unconscious bias or poor judgment, and overcome silo or rigid polarity. The board as one of the most important governance body in modern businesses plays a crucial role in setting the right tones for shaping digital leadership and envision the future of the business. It’s important to evaluate leadership maturity at the metacognitive level, and develop the digital perspective and practices to improve leadership competency. Organizations not only need good managers to take care of today’s business but also have to grow the future leaders with sophistication to deal with the complex and volatile digital ecosystem. The business leaders must work with the right mindset to develop a modern digital organization with every dip in the business lifecycle. Learn how to shape an objective view without cognitive bias that results from systemic ignorance or neglect of the cognitive layer of the whole. By exploring leadership maturity through the metacognitive lens, board directors are conscious of determining which competencies or capabilities should be used in which combination, and with what level of weight for each, for every different situation, in order to improve digital leadership influence. Put briefly, the BoD as the top leadership role needs to advocate deep thinking and helps to set digital thinking rules for improving governance maturity.

Examine metaprocess (the process of the process) of the business management as a cohesive part of strategy management oversight: The board oversees business strategy and monitor performance. The strategy management is about creating tomorrow's organization out of today. The management process effectiveness and efficiency directly impact strategy management success and business performance. The breadth and depth of the business management include people, process, organizational structure design, and technology update. The reality in most organizations though is that the process which is forcibly jammed within an existing organizational design. Thus, examining metaprocess - the process of the process could become a coherent part of strategy management oversight, to determine how each part of the organization including all of the key functions putting all together to implementing the business strategy successfully. BoDs can contribute a unique viewpoint as the business outlier to examine metaprocess because they don’t evolve in the everyday business. For example, from the risk management perspective, the board must be comfortable with the way how the management identifies and appropriately responds to risks, and that the board itself is apprised of the most significant risks facing the company. In reality, many boards and independent board directors are unfortunately focused on the data and information fed to them, and not on how and where they get the information. In practice, they should examine both meta-process and meta-information - the information of information, where does it come from? How to leverage accurate information from a reliable resource in making a sound judgment? To reach the comfort level, effective boards ensure that management has put in place an effective risk-management process, and the directors assess whether risks are undertaken and managed consistently with the right dose of risk appetite.

Scrutinize meta-diversity - the diversity of diversity in organizational leadership or team-setting: As businesses get more cut-throat in the hyper-connected digital environment, innovation has to become the differentiated business competency and inclusiveness needs to be the part of DNA in a digital organization. Innovation thrives in diversity, and diversity is the hotbed to spark creativity. The corporate board needs to set the good policy to scrutinize meta-diversity and encourage innovation. Meta-diversity or diversifying the diversity is truly about expanding the spectrum of modern diversity, to proactively evolve cognitive diversity, creative diversity, cultural diversity, knowledge/skill/background/ education diversity, and personality diversity, etc. Digital leaders need to always look at the capabilities and skills that they don't have so that they can build a winning team and complement each other. The board’s oversight of the workforce by scrutinizing meta-diversity helps to make the invisible business forces such as communication or culture more visible and fine-tune them to unlock business potential. Create a culture where every employee is a leader - initiative, collaborative, production oriented, learn and develop others, and accountable. Generally speaking, where you find an effective digital workplace initiative or a highly innovative team, regardless of the nature of the organization, you will also find some similarities in culture such as openness, inclusiveness, and risk-taking. The spirit comes from the top. The board needs diversity, more accurately, cognitive difference, to provide a perspective that can fill gaps in board discussion and shares the insight about the multidisciplinary board responsibilities.

Developing a meta-board helps to deepen digital leadership influence. Board governance is the delegate process by which a board carries out the governance of the organization. Be skeptical, be inquisitive, be creative; and apply real critical thinking to practice meta-leadership at the corporate board level to improve the board's governance duty effectively and drive digitalization seamlessly.

IT matters not only because it’s pervasive, but more about it continues to advance, and its nature of the "constructive disruption."

With “VUCA” digital new normal, for adapting to the increasing speed of changes, organizations have to be nimbler about updating technology and managing information. IT matters not only because it’s pervasive, but more about it continues to advance, and its nature of the "constructive disruption." At the highest level, IT becomes the game changer for the business. The faster the top leadership team understands that IT is not just technical, but rather business-driven, the better they can leverage IT to build differentiated organizational competency. But more specifically, how can IT leaders release digital IT brilliance to achieve business excellence, and unlocking the organizational potential?

Live in coherent alignment: Many IT organizations struggle to align with the business, get stuck at the lower level of organizational maturity. Alignment is fundamental and multidimensional. it’s about arrangement, alliance, fuse, collaboration, and integration, etc. Those organizations that have better alignment maturity outperform their competitors and tend to be more responsive to increasing pace of changes. To adapt to the increasing speed of changes, organizations have to be nimbler about updating technology and managing information effectively. IT can integrate all important business elements into a differentiated set of business capabilities. IT-business alignment is not only based on the business alignment of the IT leadership but also the business alignment of all the key players in the IT organization. It means that the company working as a whole to improve communication effectiveness, harness partnership, engage employees, foster innovation, and demonstrate the multidimensional business value, to ensure long-term business success. Further, the digital era is people-centric, living in coherent alignment means that digital organizations need to step up from IT-business alignment to IT-customer alignment to reflect the customer-centric trend; from inside-out operation-driven to outside-in business focus. Only by aligning the outside view with the inside view, can you understand the needs of people, but also the channels needed to support them in order to build a people-centric organization.

Seek profound Insight: Digital IT  shifts from “T” technology-heavy to “I” information-savvy. Information is useless if it is not being used to achieve the business purpose. The overwhelming growth of information brings both opportunities and risks to the business today. One of the most important IT responsibilities is about managing the exponential growth of information. The aim of modern Information Management has often been described as getting the right information to the right person in the right format, at the right time, to make the right decisions. Seeking profound business insight is no doubt, the brilliant way to build a highly responsive and high-performance digital powerhouse. The companies who proactively invest in strategic information management solutions will be able to steer in the right direction and competitively move forward. To keep information flow and business flow, more attention needs to be placed on the conditions that allow information or knowledge to move around and generate business value. Understanding information context is an important step in gaining business insight. In fact, information management is not the management approach within IT scope, it’s critical to break down the silo and take a holistic approach, know the business context to enable information flow frictionlessly across the organization. It needs to be a community effort, not something that IT does alone in a corner. More precisely, it’s about seeking profound insight and creating the relevant context for solving crucial business problems.

Explore business potential: Nowadays, technology is the disruptive force behind the digital transformation and IT is the differentiated business competency. IT can either make or break a company even overnight. Organizations across the vertical sectors believe they are in the information & technology business. In the digital era, information potential directly impacts the potential of the company. Performance keeps the business moving, and the potential makes the business grow and mature. Releasing digital IT brilliance is about how to unlock the potential of the entire company.  Forward-thinking companies empower their IT organization because IT is the linchpin of weaving all important business elements such as people, processes, platforms, or technologies into organizational capability. IT can also drive all sorts of innovations - the hard innovations such as products/services/business model innovation, and soft innovations such as management/communication/ culture innovations, etc. CIOs should proactively push ideas on how to leverage IT to drive business revenue growth, increase organizational productivity, flexibility, and overall business maturity. In fact, information and technology recharge the digital business with the power to respond to change quickly and innovate relentlessly.

IT is becoming more critical strategically, and the building blocks of the business competency. The increasing speed of changes forces IT leaders to get really creative on how they architect and run a high-mature organization. Still, IT is the means to the end. The goal of releasing digital IT brilliance is about delighting customers, improving employee satisfaction, and accelerating digital transformation. CIOs should be always on the lookout for ways to improve, do more with innovation, and shape a cool organization to get digital ready.

 Riding ahead of the change wave takes both strategy and methodology, a structural framework and continuous practices.

Change is inevitable, organizational change has become a common practice within an organization, but too often changes are made as a reaction to outer impulses, crisis, and demands. This is the bureaucracy’s way of meeting the challenges. A digital transformation is achieved via dynamic Strategy-Execution-Change lifecycle management, though it is not all linear steps, but an iterative, ongoing and upgoing change continuum.

The goal for improving communication transparency and effectiveness is to make hierarchical systems adaptive so that they can respond to the challenges of a more complex, interconnected, and interdependent world.

Communications are the tools to solve problems, and languages are the tools to make communications. Communication clarity directly impacts on the business effectiveness and organizational maturity. However, in many organizations, miscommunication or misunderstanding leads to conflict and malfunction. Often, communication gaps are caused by cognitive difference, ambiguous process, or management bottleneck, etc. Information Technology plays a crucial role in driving information-based communication and breaking down communication bottleneck. Communication also directly impacts IT management effectiveness. The CIO as a digital conversationist needs to make an objective assessment: Does IT communication often go through a vicious or a virtuous cycle? How can IT leaders and professionals leverage different conversation styles to construct the collaborative vision and deliver high-performance IT result for the long run?

How to break down stereotypes and communication bottlenecks? IT failure is often caused by solving the wrong problems or fixing the symptoms only due to the miscommunication between IT and business. The gap between IT and business is the reality. And one of the critical root causes is lack of communication clarity. People all filter information differently based on their understanding and experiences. When communication is based on stereotypes, unconscious bias or command control, it often leads to a vicious cycle. Thus, to improve communication effectiveness, IT needs to forge a mature adult relationship with business users, since today’s multi-generational knowledge, multicultural, and multi-devicing workforce are either technology immigrants or digital natives, overall they are more savvy about the wide range of technology than IT manager gives credit for. Further, IT leaders and professionals need to reinvent their reputation from the misunderstood geeks to the trustful business partners; from “controllers” to enablers; from victims of circumstance to digital shapers; and from overloaded and unappreciated back office function to a work hard and smart innovator. The connection between IT and business lies in using the common language to help business cross that bridge to IT. Respect your audience's cognitive diversity and professional interest, and try to send the message which appeals to them. The digital transformation is in the agenda of any forward-thinking organizations, this is a phenomenal opportunity for the CIO to communicate effectively, educate other executive leadership teams on the value of IT, as well as how she/he can help to accelerate the leadership's strategy and agenda coming and for the future years.

What are great practices and tools to improve IT communication effectiveness? Language is a method of communicating thoughts. IT leaders and professionals are polyglots who often need to understand IT jargon, business language, as well as multiple computing/programming languages in order to initiate audience tailored communications. Strategic CIOs can speak the architect’s dialect to understand things in both abstract and design level; they also need to adapt to finance tongue; of course, effective CIOs are good at technology terms to understand IT staff, and knowing some key technical details as well. Successful CIOs of today has to understand sales/marketing dialect, to "sell" his/her ideas and proposals to be effective executives. Define communication platforms and implement collaboration tools to be used. Digital platforms enabled by emerging technologies, efficient apps, and tools, help to break down functional silos, business hierarchy, and geographical border, allow people across the business ecosystem to leveraging multiple communication channels, share knowledge and work  for solving problems, overcoming common challenges, and emphasizing on communication, participation, and relationship building collaboratively. When communication leads to rumor, blame or fingerpointing, it’s gone to the vicious cycle. Remember, actions or words are said to be the second order. Thoughts are the first order. Practice information-based conversations or touch-feely talks to both connect the minds and touch the hearts for leading communication to a virtuous cycle. The ultimate goal of running a fluid digital organization is to get the mass collaboration and create business synergy through less hierarchy, cross-functional communication, with highly integrated processes designed for running a hyperconnected and interdependent business.

How to assess and measure communication outcome: Communication is the media, the tool, with the goal of leading change and business success. How to communicate just right is really critical to the business’s long-term strategy implementation and employees' engagement. It’s all about striking the right balance to communicate effectively and achieve the end goals. To break down communication bottleneck, the hard communication barriers such as outdated processes, procedures, practices should be updated, and the soft communication obstacles like culture, politics or leadership style, etc., need to be overcome. To measure communication effectiveness, focus on measuring process optimization and behavior improvement. The highly effective IT leader has to be prepared to constantly realign technology against the enterprise's business communication needs and measure how communication effectiveness enables the business's success. For example, the strategic goal of IT communication is about digital transformability. It should be measured based on the progress made for digital transformation initiatives, either through employee engagement improvement or business cross-functional collaboration enhancement. Thus, the business goal behind the IT measurement, either for soft management disciplines such as communication or the overall IT management performance has to focus on benefits generation, return on investment and contribution to either the bottom line business survival or the top-line business growth.

The goal for improving communication transparency and effectiveness is to make hierarchical systems adaptive so that they can respond to the challenges of a more complex, interconnected, and interdependent world. Breaking through the bottlenecks for improving the organizational responsiveness and changeability is a strategic imperative behind communication. The update and accurate information can make conversations more trustful; the digital platforms and tools improve communication processes and procedures for keeping communication flow and reaching the virtuous communication cycle smoothly.

Innovation is what leads to differentiation. 

Digital is the age of innovation. Innovation is what leads to differentiation. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. Digital Master refers to those high-performing, highly innovative and high-mature (less than 15%) digital organizations; at the individual level, Digital Masters are those cross-generational digital professionals who are equipped with the advanced digital minds and build a unique set of digital capabilities. Talking about innovation is not new nowadays, everybody, every organization now is talking about innovation. It's been at or near the top of the business or economics agenda for a long time. However, there are a lot of confusions about innovation and there is no magic sauce to guarantee its success. Innovation is not serendipity, but a discipline.

           Harnessing and Amplifying Innovation Effect

Three Insight of Digital Innovation? The digital era upon us is the age of innovation. The unprecedented digital convenience brought by the abundance of information and powerful technologies changes the way we think, live, and work. From a business management perspective, innovation - the practical application of creativity is essentially about problem-solving at various levels, and to solve a problem implies a wish to make something, or everything better. Innovation is the managed process which can be classified scientifically and managed dynamically. Here are three insights into digital innovation.

Develop a Learning Organization and Build Breakthrough Innovation Competency With increasing pace of changes and cutting throat competitions, to effectively respond to the digital dynamics, companies must begin thinking about ways to build their innovation competency, broaden their ecosystems and revenue streams. In reality, the true innovation always spurs certain disruptions otherwise it is not innovation. Nowadays innovation can occur anywhere in the organization, and frankly, it has to occur in every aspect of the organization, information is the most time-intensive piece of digital innovation. How can companies develop a learning organization and take a structural way to manage innovation, especially breakthrough innovations which are disruptive and will change your organizations in many fields? You need new technology, new processes, new knowledge, maybe a new business model. All that makes them very risky but on the other hand, you will get very great chances and opportunities for achieving leapfrog results.

Harnessing Innovation by Practicing Open Leadership Styles Innovation is more than designing new products or services, it is about establishing and nurturing a way of thinking where innovation is in every aspect of the business. The art of innovation is that it involves new ways of bringing together ideas and resources to create something novel. The science of innovation is to take a structural approach to manage innovation. It requires collaboration, openness, sharing, and joyful teamwork. This is radically different from the command-and-control style of management. Digital leaders today can harness innovation by practicing open leadership styles and improve innovation management effectiveness.

The Amplification of Innovation Effect? The definition of innovation is simple - to gain benefit by doing something different. Innovation has to result in something which leads us to a better state than where we are today. Digital innovation has a broader scope with a full-color spectrum. In the hyperconnected and interdependent digital ecosystem, innovation can happen anywhere, anytime, it expands both horizontally and vertically. How to amplify innovation effect to benefit the widest audience of the digital ecosystem though?

Does Trust Harness Creativity and Innovation? There is a full cycle of emotions behind innovation. Trust is one of the positive emotions to harness creativity and innovation. Trust is a measure of the quality of a relationship between people, groups, or between people and an organization; and trust is a two-way street. Trust is multidimensional. It encompasses trusting self, trusting others, and earning the trust of others.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.8 million page views with about 5200+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way to human progression.

There are outliers, who take up the mantle of imagination and shine through to push the world forward. 

Knowledge is the foundation of the imagination. We can use knowledge of the forces of the physics to guide us in the exploration of the earth or space. Our imagination lets us dream of where we could go, knowledge helps us understand how and what forces we are dealing with in our journey. A great wealth of knowledge fuels imaginations. This, in turn, becomes things which can be useful. However, too much knowledge, especially if it’s outdated or too little knowledge will turn to be the trap of innovativeness.

Knowledge is important, but openness is more critical to spark innovation: Knowledge is important, but having a lot of knowledge about something can be a box that closes one's mind to innovation in that area. Openness is the most difficult thing to refresh your mind. And once you accept openness, the second most difficult thing is about practicing it. The possible answer lies in the conscious application of what we know and at the same time, stay open to the unknown, so that new thinking and knowledge can emerge. Imagine what can be accomplished by increasing knowledge and applying it to what one has imagined. Curiosity stimulates a need to gain knowledge and knowledge is not just book knowledge, but intuitive knowledge feeds the imagination. And imagination flows freely when supported by the fluidity of thought and feeling. Children are a good example of having that kind of open-mindedness, curiosity, and joy for exploring.

Siloed or outdated knowledge is what leads to a decrease in imagination: Cross-pollinating ideas, collaborating and sharing are what spurs innovation. Having knowledge is a good thing, debating, sharing, and exploring what to do with that knowledge and connecting disparate ideas that don't seem to fit together naturally will lead to the true imagination! Our knowledge is always based on what's known. It's information that's been discovered. However, in order to take any entity to a new place, imagination has to be exercised to uncover and create something new. Knowledge can be useful in trying to understand if what's imagined can be achieved. So, a responsible use of knowledge is not an impediment to the imagination. Knowledge should be helpful for imagination - it helps to widen the fields and the scope, as well as gives wings to the imagination. But if there's a paradigm shift, and then knowledge can be a hindrance.

Albert Einstein well said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge": He's not saying knowledge is unimportant, we absolutely need knowledge. But knowledge is what is and what has been. Knowledge could be outdated. While imagination is dynamic. It's anything you want it to be. So, it's not the knowledge, it's what you do with that knowledge that can be creative, like using your knowledge of something, but in a new context. “Too much knowledge" in itself is not an impediment to the imagination, but failure to recognize how vastly ignorant we are at the same time leads to an arrogance that will not admit new thinking. It’s not about how much knowledge you acquire, it’s about what impact that knowledge has on you. Does knowledge trap you or, does it sets you free to soar. Imagination is then, a choice you make irrespective of what you know or, what you are aware of; and then, knowledge is not an impediment, it becomes a springboard.

For CIO to shine as the digital modernist, they really need to evaluate the issues, do the due diligence, ask the right questions and take a logical scenario for driving changes and leading digital transformation.

Information Technology is now permeating into every corner of the business, it’s a crucial component to run a modern business. As businesses embark on the “digital Era” of computing, the landscape for all executive roles constantly change, the CIO role also continues to be reimagined and reshaped. They should keep asking themselves: What is the future of IT? How to shape a digital IT organization? What is the nature of the digital IT leadership and what is the primary role of the CIO in harnessing the IT leadership? Am I a traditional CIO or a modernist CIO?

Traditional CIOs are classic management practitioners; modernist CIOs are systems thinkers and digital management explorers: In the evolutionary human society, Newtonian mechanics have fueled industrialization. Traditional CIOs often live in the box, leverage linear logic and take the reductionistic approach (business is the sum of parts) to manage IT, focus on efficiency - doing more with less. However, now we are moving in the hyperconnected and interdependent digital economy, digital businesses today are more like organic living things keep growing, rather than mechanical systems keeps spinning. The linear business system perception is replaced by the adaptive digital system perspective, and technical behavior is replaced by socio-technical behavior. Digital leaders should apply the multidisciplinary management approach for dynamic business planning and actions, which are always based on rough estimations of what the future conditions of business execution would be. Therefore, digital modernist IT leaders need to envision and embrace the emerging technology trends, practice Systems Thinking to ensure that IT is an integral component of the business and linchpin of the digitalization. More specifically, the role of modern CIO is to identify and blend the ways that information and technology can assist and shape the future of business by linking all digital components together to enforce value creation. Digital CIOs also need to leverage Systems Thinking to make effective decisions in IT management and orchestrate digitalization. ‘Systems Thinking' applies at both the level of technology artifacts in the resource category, as well as IT effect at the enterprise level, across all business functions, for driving changes in a structural way. System Analysis requires many forms of additional thinking - abstract, holistic, system, quantitative, objective, subjective, temporal (life cycle), and critical.

Traditional CIOs are often inside-out - operation focus, modernist CIOs are outside-in - people-centric: Traditional CIOs often manage and measure IT from inside-out IT lenses; struggle to get aligned with the business. The majority of IT organizations are pushing inside out, which could create the gaps between what the customer needs and what IT really delivers. It’s important for CIOs to both have business acumen and IT knowledge to ensure IT acting as an integral part of the business. The digital CIO should focus on the information content and context; how that information can be tapped from the underlying data and be utilized to turn it into valuable strategic insight; as well as how the information can be penetrated through the organization and be actively used in managing business processes and shaping the digital business. From the IT management perspective, contextual understanding is about getting to know the whole meaning of functional dialects and business dynamic and perceive the business insight in a cohesive way. IT has to build up a strong partnership, not just provide standardized services, but also manage customer-tailored solutions which are built upon rigorous business’s capabilities in which IT is the “super glue.” Digital CIOs are inspiring ‘storytellers” who can help business customers or partners gain open perspectives on IT performance and potential, close the perception, communication, and collaboration gaps between IT and business. They are able to initiate communication at the different level of the organization with clarity and work collaboratively with other business leaders, transform the company or organization to increase its customer-centric maturity and build a culture to focus on creating value for their customers.


Traditional CIOs are the business stabilizer, the modernist CIOs advocate changes, and digital transformation: Traditional CIOs are often controllers who “keep the lights on,” a bit reluctant to change. Their IT organizations are sometimes perceived as change laggard, drag down the speed of the business change. Nowadays, the need for change is obvious. It is an IT responsibility to identify opportunities for business transformation wherever analysis and assessment indicate the potential benefits of transformation efforts. The CIO as a change agent not only touches his/her own function but also needs to make an influence on the entire organization and at the business ecosystem as well. Change is never for its own sake, the digital modernist CIOs can envision the emerging technology trends, explain the big why” behind business initiatives, articulate the strategic rationale behind the venture, as well as discover the new path for digital transformation. IT plays a change agent role in Business Transformation by leveraging systematic thinking and well thought-out planning. Thus, Change Management needs to be a mechanism embedded in a multitude of IT management as well. For CIO to shine as the digital modernist, they really need to evaluate the issues, do the due diligence, ask the right questions and take a logical scenario for driving changes and leading digitalization.

As the modern CIO, you have the most influential position in the business. Don’t waste the opportunity, seize it. For running a future-driven digital organization, digital CIOs have better sense to capture technology trends, move energy to a higher level by offering a clear vision of what is possible, have the insight to understand things holistically; respect the diversified viewpoints. If CIOs can see beyond the confines of their own function by understanding all the moving parts of the business and contribute to the overall improvement of the business, and then, this is the true proactive contribution to the top line business growth and leap the business up to the next level of the enterprise maturity.