The Monthly Insight of Information Management: The Characteristics of Information Management System Sep. 2019

Information Management is a system with interdependent processes, technologies, and a set of interdisciplinary practices for moving the business to a dynamic, iterative, integral and interactive digital flow.

The aim of modern Information Management has often been described as getting the right information to the right person, in the right format and medium, at the right time, in order to make the right decisions. The value of information is qualitative, measurable, and defined uniquely by an organization.

     



The Characteristics of Information Management System


Three Characteristics of Information Management System A system is a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole. A system has a purpose to perform a set of functions to achieve well-defined goals. A system which is composed of interacting and interdependent pieces has a specific structure which is defined by its components and processes - the interrelationship between components. Managing information and the information position of an organization is what ought to be called Information Management. Information Management is a system with interdependent processes, technologies, and a set of interdisciplinary practices for moving the business to a dynamic, iterative, integral and interactive digital flow.

Is IT a System A system is the part of the world which has to be of interest to us on the basis of a certain purpose. Only then you think about the other properties (interaction of elements, environment, etc.). A subsystem correctly defined is, in any case, a system. A model is something different though and has to do with our knowledge about a system and its functioning. Is IT (Information & Technology) a system, though?

Dots Connection: Information System (IS) vs. Information Technology (IT) An information system is an abstract view of an activity system focusing on the gathering, processing, distribution, and use of information. It provides the information needed for the decisions that are part of the activity system. The Information Technology system supports the information system. It encapsulates hardware, software, data and communication technologies. It provides data to be used by people as information.

CIOs as Chief Improvement Officer: What are the signals of Dysfunctional IT Systems Today’s organizations are far from perfect, there are ineffectiveness, dysfunction, overlapping, complication, silo, gaps, infighting, and inefficiencies, etc., all over the place. IT is in a unique position to oversee the underlying processes, build capabilities, and orchestrate the digital transformation, CIOs as IT leaders and Chief Improvement Officer: Can you identify the signals of dysfunctional IT systems - not just through the symptoms on the surface, but digging into the root causes, and fix them smoothly to improve the business agility and maturity?

How Important an Information System can be in Digital Business Success? In the industrial era, the majority of IT organizations are supporting functions to keep the business light on; the cost center to maintain legacy applications and infrastructure, and the gatekeeper to control the status quo. Nowadays IT and its value implication to the business have changed drastically; information becomes the lifeblood of digital business, and digital technology is lightweight but more powerful than ever. The question is –How important an information system can be in today, can you separate technology from an information system in order to achieve the intended results? And how to make Information Management as 'powerful' and 'worthy' to an organization as possible?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6000th 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 and innovating 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.
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An Influential Corporate Board

Highly influential corporate boards are heterogeneous, inquisitive, intelligent, effective, innovative and influential. 

People tend to make leadership very complex, but in its most simple form, leadership is an influence. With rapid changes and exponential growth of information, the command control style of management is gradually losing its steam. Digital leadership needs to be highly intelligent and influential, to lead through influence, but brute force. The corporate board as one of the top leadership pillars must influence and exemplify progressive leadership and help to shape an ultra-modern digital organization effortlessly.

Influential Intelligence: A mindset could be called influential intelligence if it can discover the patterns of inter-relationship among different disciplines, understand the mindsets of all members of the group. The insightful board leaders has the ability to influence peers or management team as they undertake a broad range of crucial decisions involving issues such as strategy, performance, branding, technological vision, finance, talent management, etc. They do not dominate discussions, instead, they encourage open critical debates, encourage fresh perspectives, and appreciate the collective insight from peer board directors as well as various stakeholders. To "influence" means to be able to shape other people's views or opinions towards one's own views or perspectives. With influential intelligence, the contemporary corporate board can inspire, innovate, improve, interact, interpret, exemplify, encourage, and orchestrate change. The corporate board leaders with influential intelligence have adaptability, consistency, profundity, and empathy to steer the business in the right directions under business dynamic and lead the business forward smoothly.

Expertise influence: Top board leaders need to have broader business acumen, deep expertise, transdisciplinary knowledge, cross-functional experience, and leadership skills. As a senior leadership role, corporate board directors should be the specialized generalists with “T” shaped expertise, and they are able to embrace the seemingly paradoxical point of views in order to gain a deep understanding of varying strategic topics holistically. Most of the board directors are top seasoned executives with decades of experience. Collectively, the digital board with a blend of expertise and capabilities can foster a culture of innovation and improve boardroom decision effectiveness and leadership maturity. To reach the state of knowledge proficiency and spread expertise influence, it is also important to identify and close the gap between knowledge and insight in the boardroom. Board directors are not just the follower to chase the tidal waves blindly, but able to capture the invaluable business insight to make sound judgments and effective decisions in a consistent way.

World class leadership influence: The ultimate criterion of "high-influential leadership," is the ability to create more leaders, to spread leadership, or more precisely, to groom more authentic leaders with the ability to think differently, independently, and innovatively. To amplify leadership influence, digital leaders including corporate board directors need to be constantly visible by sharing vision and enabling others to share it. Their leadership influence is made based on the leadership substances such as vision and purpose with effective digital leadership styles such as participation, coaching or delegation. The corporate board’s global leadership influence is based on their world-class leadership competencies such as self-regulation, social judgment skills, empathy, motivation to work in a global environment, cultural cognition, acceptance of complexity and its contradictions, the tolerance of ambiguity, flexibility, and learning agility. Their leadership influence must be built on the foundation of the moral competencies such as wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance.

Highly influential corporate boards are heterogeneous, inquisitive, intelligent, effective, innovative and influential. Open leadership, humble attitude, adaptability, creativity, sound judgment, inclusiveness, and fact-driven communication, are digital leadership traits to make profound leadership influence. Highly influential leaders understand themselves and have a story to tell, they develop an authentic leadership brand, and encourage others to do the same.
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The Enterprise’s Innovation Appetite, Attitude, Aptitude

With the right innovation appetite, attitude, and aptitude, the organization is on the right track of developing innovation as a business-wide unique competency.

Digital is the age of innovation, Innovation is always a tough journey, not a flat road. Digital innovation is coming at seemingly much faster paces, and there are more potential disruptions, with a broader scope, scale, and impact on the business’s long term surviving and thriving. Companies have to be prepared to lose some to gain more for the longer term. They need to make an objective assessment of their innovation appetite, attitude, and aptitude, and manage an innovation portfolio strategically and systematically to achieve great business results for the long term.

The innovation appetite: There are always risks involved in managing innovation. The innovation appetite of the business directly impact on how aggressively the company can manage innovation and the time-frame they focus on. Breakthrough innovation has greater ROI but with much bigger risks and often takes longer time to achieve. The variety of research identifies innovation initiatives that ultimately break new ground frequently are fraught with uncertain on many dimensions such as technical, market, resource, and organizational uncertainties abound. Innovation is risky because money and resource spent on R&D is not necessarily a good indicator of future innovation performance. Therefore, innovation leaders with the right dose of innovation appetite can manage a healthy innovation portfolio with the right mix of incremental innovation and breakthrough innovation, to reap the short-term gain and long-term innovation benefits. The shareholders who highly value innovation would value organizations with bigger innovation appetite and devote more resources towards future breakthrough innovation more than those that only manage short-term incremental innovation.

The innovation attitude: Innovation is high-risky because more often you are doing something that hasn't been done before. Innovation risk would broadly need to consider both endogenous and exogenous drivers. It is the common knowledge that innovation management requires the highest risk taking at a strategic value chain, including organization, investments, and assets. From a financial management perspective, consider what capital you are prepared to risk in making the innovation- never let this be too much that losing it will cripple your business. The differentiation between a good innovation and bad innovation is the innovation leader’s attitude toward risk. The job of innovation management is to help when a failure happens to turn it around as a team. The good innovation leaders have excellent attitude toward innovation, demonstrate rational risk management skills and are able to shift from “risk-avoidance” to “risk-intelligence” mentality. The great attitude towards innovation is about taking calculated risks to inspire good innovation initiatives for capturing growth opportunities, being cautious about obstacles or pitfalls, staying focused, weighing risks and rewards, taking prudent risks and discovering better ways to mitigate risks rather than eliminate it. De-risk the introduction of innovations into the market, protecting existing operations and brands and establishing clear proof-of-concept before making investments to launch and scale.

The innovation aptitude: The good or bad innovation would depend on the business’s aptitude to manage innovation. And the innovation aptitude is based on the overall business competency to manage innovation with a set of tools, structures, and talent. Highly innovative organizations are better equipped to manage innovation by allocating time and resources to the people in charge. Innovation fails because many organizations lack a cohesive strategy or a systematic approach to manage both opportunities and risks in a structural way. Innovation success depends on many factors. From budget management perspective, since part of innovation is not knowing how and for what you will use the budget; and some innovation needs to be fed with resources while others get better by starving them. It’s important to design a flexible strategy as a compass to help innovation management adapt quickly and cost effectively to unpredictable changes in the environment, with the goal to manage a healthy innovation portfolio and build innovation competency to reap higher-than-expected business benefits.

With the right innovation appetite, attitude, and aptitude, the organization is on the right track of developing innovation as a business-wide unique competency. A leading digital organization with innovation competency can handle innovation streams for different goals and different time frames and manage a balanced portfolio including both radical innovation and incremental innovation, hard innovation and soft innovation seamlessly.
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The Monthly “Dot Connections”: The Vision Dot Connection Sep. 2019

Vision is where or who you want to be and strategy is how you can achieve or reach your goal. 


The effects of an increasingly digitized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. Organization of the Future is an organization designed openly for anyone with ideas on how human organizations ought to be contrived in the face of the strategic imperatives of the digital era. The work is not the place you go, but a live organization and an experiment lab you can connect the dots to explore the art of possibility.

 

     

The Vision Dot Connection 


Vision vs. Insight As businesses and the world move deeper and deeper into the digital world of VUCA -volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, one of the most desired traits for leaders is VISION, because leadership is all about direction, it shows people where to go; and the other equally important leadership trait is INSIGHT, because it brings up the big WHY - why do you go where you are going and how to get there. So more specifically, what are apple to apple comparisons between vision vs. insight?

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 Journey: From Vision to Orientation? The roadmap is a commonly used tool to communicate long-term thinking effectively. Strategists, planners, and architects use road-maps to communicate their vision of strategic capabilities and competencies. From vision to orientation, it is a logical step for organizations to prepare for their digital journey.

The Future-Driven Leadership - Vision vs. Leadership The substance of leadership never changes. It’s all about making the positive influence, and providing direction, both for oneself and others. Leadership is about CHANGE. It is a basic human ability to inspire self and others to look beyond limitations and make continuous improvement. This ability becomes a capability if we constantly nurture our basic human instincts of HUMILITY, CURIOSITY, and CREATIVITY. Fundamentally, leadership is more about future but starts at today.

Three Dot-Connections in Leadership Vision A Vision is to zoom into the future as if it were closer. Top leaders are supposed to be the guiding force in the organization or even with a broader scope, envisioning and leading it towards its future. Every C-level leader must participate in creating and shaping a company's vision. A visionary changes the course of business by seeing beyond what all other see or by charting new revenue or growth through the creation of a new product or market; or share their perception of future trends of business such as digitalization, innovation, or globalization. Here are three dot-connections in leadership vision.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6000th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. 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 and innovating 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.
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The Best “Flexibility” Quotes of “Digital Master” Sep. 2019

Flexibility means less rigid processes, well-known practices, or “right vs. wrong” polarity.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Flexibility” quotes in “Digital Master.”




1 Technically, flexibility is about figuring out alternative ways to solve problems; psychologically, being flexible is simply an ability to learn and adapt to changes, an intelligence to explore new possibilities, take further responsibilities but also and above all, in the effectiveness of its initiatives.

2 Though the meaning of the word flexibility, in general, more refers to physical movement capable of being bent without breaking. Flexibility is a mental process which results in an action that tests a possible solution.

3 Flexibility means less rigid processes, well-known practices, or “right vs. wrong” polarity.

4 A flexible mind loves choices, enjoys making differences; feels comfortable to be unique and innovative, and welcomes the diversity of thoughts as a fountain of creativity.

5 Unlike the closed mechanical system, digital organization are like the living system, spontaneously self-organizes, generates patterns, forms structures, initiates business activities, and above all, creates novelty over time. Achieve strategic flexibility by developing the proper module design architecture, with reusability and process flow:

6 A flexible workplace is open, inclusive, and innovative for coming up with best business solutions all the time.

7 The culture of flexibility advocated by effective leadership is about bringing out the best in others, to make people feel comfortable with being who they are and taking the necessary risks to solve tough problems.

8 Flexible leadership means the vision to foresee the future trend ahead, and the creativity to solving the problem on the way.

9 A flexible organization is a complex social system starting to appreciate such attributes as 'readiness,’ 'ownership,' ‘integration,’ 'full open communication,’ customized structuring as well as developing 'partnerships.’
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Create Digital Indexes to Improve IT Management Maturity

 IT management needs to create important digital indexes, leverage good mechanisms, and discover both the art and science of holistic digital management discipline.

IT is the business. The management of IT is the integral management discipline to ensure that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces. IT leaders need to manage various conflicts between classic style and digital style of management. The Digital Index is a collection of digital policies and initiatives to enforce digital management disciplines. IT leaders can create digital management indexes to improve the management maturity and reinvent IT as an energetic business partner to delight customers and lead digital transformation seamlessly.

 IT value index: Each organization has a set of capabilities that enable it to achieve successful business outcomes, whether financial, brand or double bottom line, IT is like a linchpin for integrating all different business elements into a unique set of business capabilities. IT is the means to an end, not the end itself. It’s important to triangulate IT value from the business lens such as a strategic competency, operational excellence, and business agility, create an IT value index in building a more comprehensive IT value proposition. IT is the steward of one of the most important business assets - information. The information that IT delivers is what gives executives, managers and staff details every employee needs to make the right decisions in their position at the right time, for improving overall business speed and competency. There are tangible (cost savings, efficiency, etc.) and intangible (brand equity, sales enablement, etc.) components of IT value. To improve IT organizational maturity from a support center to a strategic business partner, IT investment is more effective in improving business profitability by increasing revenue than by decreasing operating expenses. The well-run IT organizations can demonstrate agility by being responsive to tactical business opportunities to the degree possible while remaining focused on developing and executing a longer-term strategy. The better integration between business and IT, the higher level of agility for both will be achieved.

Personal Innovation-index (PÏ): Forward-thinking organizations introduce the Personal Innovation-index (PÏ) to drive growth, catalyze creativity and innovation within a company.the PÏ index will indicate the contributed economic value of each employee, including both executive/management and professional/expert, in relation to their innovative initiatives and personal activities, commitment, influences, impact, and contributions. More specifically, the Personal Innovation Index represents the innovation maturity level of employees based on their personal impact and influences on innovation-their ability to innovate, their ability to network externally, their ability to collaborate and facilitate innovation success. Generally speaking, the more innovative the employees are, the less tolerant of structure (policies, rules, and paradigms) and less respectful of consensus one is. Innovators often prefer to “do things differently.” Therefore, select for empowerment, select for curiosity, select for learning agile, and select for breakthrough.

The Barrett Values Index: It is a quantitative, qualitative and inclusive measurement tool for gauging organizational culture. The variety of industry research clearly indicated that the carefully crafted and well-intended strategy fail in the execution phase if culture is weak because the shared value and buy-in at all levels of the organization are misaligned. A good culture can perhaps make an average strategy working, but a bad culture will fail a good strategy. The strategic alignment happens as a by-product of culture tuning. The Barrett Value Index center on three questions that all employees should ask themselves:

(1) what are your personal values

(2) what do you see as the company's current values

(3) what do you believe the future company values should be

Directing energy and attention at measuring and improving culture will yield synergistic results in desired change. Or use the synthesis of Socio-Technical Systems (STS) Analysis to measure change-readiness against the contexts of goals, people, processes, procedures, infrastructure, technology, and culture.

Digital IT is impacting every business unit and is becoming the very driver of business change. With emerging lightweight digital technologies and overwhelming growth of information, IT management shouldn't just practice transactional activities, it needs to create important digital indexes, leverage good mechanisms, and discover both the art and science of holistic digital management discipline.
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The Monthly Organizational Structure Tuning: Fine-Tuning a Vital Digital Organization Sep. 2019

Organization design is the vehicle through which the business strategy is executed and defines the business environment in which the digital organization can reduce the organizational culture friction, improve business changeability and maturity,

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. From an organizational structure perspective, how can you fine-tune the digital dimension of your organizational development to harness innovation and build a vital digital organization?


Fine-Tuning a Vital Digital Organization 


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.

Fair Reasons to Fine-Tune the Organizational Structure The digital organization is an integral business system with policies, cultures, work climates, people (employees, customers, partners, etc.) and processes. To keep digital fit, the organization has to keep optimizing its functional or structural design and management pyramid to achieve a high level of autonomy and the state of digital equilibrium. The whole business ecosystem needs to communicate, negotiate and cooperate with each other for catalyzing changes and harnessing innovation. Here are some fair reasons to fine-tune the organizational structure for streamlining digital flow and improving the organizational maturity.

Three Aspects of Designing a Viable Digital Organization Digital organizations are the complex ecosystem with the blurring line between functions and geographic locations. Going digital is a long journey with all sorts of barriers and pitfalls on the way. You have to strike the right balance between order and chaos, change and stability, innovation and standardization. Viability is one of the very characteristics of the digital organization. You may leverage design thinking to reinvent an organization which can enforce collaboration and harness innovation by creating business synergy, maintaining viability, and making strategic effects.

Heralding an Ecological 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.

Digital Organizational Design vs. Business Changeability The very characteristics of digital are the increasing speed of change and hyper-connectivity. Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business both horizontally and vertically. Forward-looking organizations leverage the latest technologies to fine tune the organizational structure and improve the business changeability. Organization design is the vehicle through which the business strategy is executed and defines the business environment in which the digital organization can reduce the organizational culture friction, improve the business changeability, maturity, and unleash its full potential.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6000+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating 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.
Read More
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