How can Digital Leaders Today Evolve the Wide, Wild Digital New Normal

The wide and wild digital new normal is not for the weak soul or the static mindset. 
Digital disruptions are inevitable, and digital transformation is unstoppable. Organizations shouldn’t just respond to them in a reactive way. It is the transformation that is reshaping our thinking, recasting the way we view ourselves and the hyperconnected world surrounding us, re-adjust our lens to see the dynamic and expansive digital ecosystems of which we are the part of the environments. Today’s digital leaders must envision the emerging digital trends, imagine the new scenes and possibilities, evolve the wide and wild digital new normal and interpret what they see to shape the future of the business. They have to aim high, to become the digital catalyzer and game changer.

Design the digital landscape: Digital leaders today need to focus outward on the horizon for future opportunities and pitfalls. There are multitudes of gaps between the industrial age and the digital age, understanding the digital paradigm shift is multifaceted. The "view of the digital landscape” has many dimensions, such as ecological, technological, social-cultural, and philosophical, psychological, etc. These dimensions interact and mutually influence each other. The digital boundary is a fluid wave, not sharp line, and digital landscape has the full spectrum of colors, not black & white. Those who look through the lens of the previous era see their own reality very differently from those who use the lens that the new era has crafted. Digital leaders today have to open their minds to absorb the new knowledge and open their eyes to see things differently. It is especially important for transforming old mental maps or paradigms and creating the unique insight that is “outside the box” of conventional thought. Because digital leaders play a crucial role in co-creating future, sharing the vision, expressing the interaction as an emergence of new scenes and co-designing the bright digital landscape with colors and themes.

Define the change roadmap: Envisioning the future is exciting, but to reach the destination, it takes planning and how to define the change roadmap. Trying to be 'transformative' just because it is the latest buzzword will fail because it will not be able to offer a powerful story as to why it needs to succeed and it will also not get too further if there’s not a great roadmap to navigate through. A clearly defined roadmap is available, and industry best practices are in place to serve as a framework upon which the solution can be implemented over time. Define more than one way of achieving the goal. Each stage is a point where in business gets the benefit of the activities so far or has taken up the activities so far to form a stepping stone for the big step. The artifact of a digital-ready roadmap becomes one that covers what the application portfolio looks like today; what it needs to look like to achieve the well-defined business goals; and the series of initiatives/changes/steps that bring the portfolio from here to there. Businesses and organizations that find themselves setting new and radically different trajectories are facing a daunting task of navigating largely uncharted territories. Digital leaders today must be fluent with the digital dialogs, be alert to identify blind spots, be conscious of the unknown, be flexible to adjust the planning, be open to listening to the different points of views, be determined when you have to make a tough choice and take the calculated risk.

Draw knowledge flow chart: Digital is also the era of information overloading and knowledge abundance. Digital knowledge management is not managing knowledge as an object, it is providing the management system that enables information and knowledge flow to achieve a state of dynamic balance. Data needs to be collected continuously and is meaningless until it is processed into information. Knowledge is information put to use. Knowledge flow chart is related to the organizational structure. Look at the organization chart to figure out where in the organization the requested expertise might be sitting. With a well-drawn knowledge flowchart, there arises an opportunity to analyze and reuse the data as they go about their activities, and from that to generate valuable knowledge that can be shared to help everyone in their work and keep talent grow. The part of taking knowledge seriously as a corporate asset involves assigning responsibility for knowledge within the organization, both maintaining and improving the information stock and ensuring knowledge flow. With the digital paradigm shift, knowledge is not less important, but more important, but knowledge alone is not sufficient, gaining business insight and foresight to accelerate digitalization is the key.

The wide and wild digital new normal is not for the weak soul or the static mindset. People have to frame a growth mindset, learn to use the new lens of the new era, acquire the new thinking and fresh insight. Because when a new stage emerges in the progression of society and advance of the technology, the continued use of the old paradigm, the old-world-view-lens, creates ever-increasing problems rather than solving problems innovatively. It's time to step into the deep, deep digital new normal, co-designing the delightful digital landscape, defining a comprehensive change roadmap and drawing a scientific knowledge flowchart are all stepwise approaches to embrace change and evolve digital proactively.

Posted in: Digital Master,Digitalization