Influence ~ Future of CIO

Business professionals with multidimensional intelligence and interdisciplinary expertise are profound to understand issues thoroughly: Due to overcomplexity and rapid change of contemporary society, it is impossible to have complete knowledge and understanding of many issues facing businesses and societies today. It is the responsibility of each individual to examine themselves and make sure they are open to deepen understanding; it’s important to perceive the interdependence of varying relevant issues or connected pieces interdisciplinarily, provide the deep insight into the emergent events; do analysis and synthesis accordingly, to break things down, binds pieces up, to understand issues inside out, get to know customers outside in. Profound understanding leads to sound judgment and effective problem solving.

Being profound is not for its own sake, but to make progressive changes: So far knowledge and wisdom have evolved in humans with their eyes and ears open to understanding. If you always use linear logic to make judgments in the dynamic situation, you are not profound; If you only capture the symptom, without digging through the root cause, you are not profound. If you keep the “we always do things like that,” mentality, or ignore “lessons learned,” you are not profound. If you practice group thinking, not inclusive enough, you are not profound. If you cannot strike the right balance of disciplines and flexibilities; innovation and process, personalization and standardization, you are not profound. Profundity is to make progressive changes and catalyze innovation.

Being profound implies authenticity, and clear discernment, high professionalism: Being profound is about balance of confidence and humility, passion and caution, confidence and humility, candor and diplomacy, in a professional way, without any sort of bipolar thinking or unconscious bias. Consistency as a profundity element is about being who you are, thinking, speaking, acting, and added value coherently. In order to present the strong “intellectual persuasiveness” skill, you need to have vision, knowledge, insight, and wisdom to make a profound influence. Empathy as another ingredient of profundity means using the right language with the right people; from a problem-solving perspective, you can always listen and build understanding issues by imagining what it could feel like if you were in the other party’s position. Gravitas as an ingredient of profundity is about how you can generate energy in yourself to help consciously and consistently create the authentic impact you choose; the deeper you can think, the more profound you become.

Profundity enables people to become more insightful, persuasive, and influential. Open-mindedness, high levels of cognitive ability, strong observation skills, cross-boundary knowledge and experiences, learning agility, etc, are all key factors to improve professional profundity; deal with complex situations in a more complex, ambiguous, hyper-connected and globally distributed world effectively.