Ingredientsofleadershipvii ~ Future of CIO

Leadership now becomes more open and interdisciplinary, influential and innovative, with varying ingredients. The leaders today need to become more benevolent to unify the difference; more experimental to spur innovation; more adventurous to explore the “art of possibility,” and more cautious of potential risks, for advancing human society.

Leadership & forthrightness: Leadership is about innovation and progression. What leadership focuses on is about leading with purpose and intent to achieve particular objectives. The qualities that are most critical to being a leader are all associated with the ability to be one who can influence others to do great things and accomplish goals motivationally. Leaders with forthrightness present high levels of ethics, benevolence, responsibility, integrity, fairness, and empathy, etc. They do not focus on hierarchy but on ideas, and innovative problem-solving. 

Real societal advancement is made through the work of collective consciousness, knowledge, and dialogues/activities, etc, to transcend our modern society into a tremendous living system for growth and invention. Business leaders today can’t predict every turn or curve as uncertainty is the reality; it is possible that an organizational system can stay in a chaos or even a crisis situation temporarily where there exists negative interaction among the elements. Great leadership can contribute to a better society by harnessing cross-functional communication, fostering collaboration, embracing collective insight, and enforcing the multitude of business cycles.

Leadership & forethoughtness: The pace of change for organizations is overwhelming. Leadership is figuring out which decisions need to be made and laying out a compelling vision for the path to follow. However, leadership ineffectiveness is becoming the failure of most businesses or initiatives within a business.There is silo spreading in the different layers of the organization; there are gaps existing across borders; there are overly rigid processes and organizational pyramid which cause bureaucratic management redundancy. 

Forthoughtful leaders recognize the limitations of the perspectives, methods, and tools of the traditional management methodology, provide an insightful outlook about what the future of the organization should be and what are existing problems and challenges, listen & observe, and provide outsider’s opinions synthesized from a variety of industries and companies; so they can lead holistically and drive changes smoothly.

Leadership & fluency: The digital era upon us represents the next stage of the growth cycle with which people and organizations improve how they work and interact with each other as well as its ecosystem. Leadership fluency is based on versatility and flexibility; with a good combination of fitting mindsets, attitudes, expertise, and behaviors, etc. Top leaders need to have both broad business acumen, knowledge fluency and in-depth expertise in the specific field in order to make deep influence. 

The digital leaders are multi-dimensional thinkers and versatile innovators themselves. They embody vitality, imagination, hope and sense of energy. Interdisciplinary knowledge, cross-functional experience, recombinant capabilities and leadership skills – a balance of hard skills and soft skills are all important ingredients to improve leadership fluency.

Leadership is about the future, the future implicates changes and innovation. Leadership is about identifying and envisioning a worthy objective, and engaging people to work towards that objective. Leadership is the state of mind, to continuously influence and catalyze changes. Leadership needs to be highly intelligent and highly influential. Influential leadership is like the light, permeating into every aspect of the organizations or societies.