Thursday, January 15, 2015

To Celebrate 1500th Blog - Digital Master Tuning XIII: The Profile of Digital Master

Digital Master refers to those high-performing, high-innovative and high-mature digital organizations or individuals.

After new year celebration, here comes the 1500th blog posting on 1/15/2015, and we continue the new book debut for Digital Master tuning - Who are the Digital Master, what’s The profile of being a Digital Master? And how to become a Digital Master?


On the cover of Digital Master, we illustrate a huge flywheel to symbolize the accelerating digital effect. We are at the digital dawn. Digital is not just about any digital technology, the cool products or the fancy website; it is the mind shift and business transformation. It requires re-organizing and orchestrating the entire organization because digital impacts every aspect of the business and it is the core of organizational strategy.


Digital Master refers to those high-performing, high-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. But they also proactively develop more advanced and unique digital capabilities step-by-step, and build a digital premium into their very foundation of business, such as digital thinking, culture, agility, intelligence, and structure, and they achieve high performing results through strong digital governance discipline and reach its zenith as the digital world continues to expand and diversify. At the individual level, Digital Master are those cross-generational digital professionals who are equipped with the advanced digital minds and build a unique set of digital capabilities, climb to the top of Maslow’s Pyramid 2.0.


The Digital transformation, like the computer technology revolution itself, is a long journey: The outlines of the fully digitalized world have long been sketched, now the phenomenon of digital is reaching the inflection point, yet we are now entering an even more rapid and extensive period of change. As this notion of “digitization” is now affecting all aspects of business operations from innovation within and around business ecosystem, to customer engagement, to business models and processes – and no industry is exempt. Hence, most companies naturally aim to move into a more advanced stage of digital deployment by tailoring their own unique strength and business maturity. They hope to outstrip competitors and eventually become the digital masters.


“Digital Master” is the guidebook to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the business and workforce: There are following nine chapters to help businesses navigate through the journey and avoid the “rogue digital.” It also instructs digital workforce on how to shape game-changing digital mindset, and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future.


  • Digital vision: Digitalization is a constant game changer for the organization. It is the age of customer; empathy is the core foundation in customer-centricity. The organizations of the future are increasingly exhibiting digital characteristics in various shades and intensity.


  • Digital mindset: The mindset is far more important than talent. Talent can always be developed by those with an open and right mindset.  Leaders and talent with the digital transformational mind are in higher demand, as transformational leadership is all about change.


  • Digital strategy: The whole is superior to the sum of pieces. A strategic vision for how digital will transform the business, understand the whole before you build out the pieces, and create a roadmap for implementing such transformation.


  • Digital culture - The right culture is a prerequisite for implementing the digital strategy. A great culture can support a weak strategy, but a weak culture cannot support a great strategy. A strong digital culture promotes inclusiveness, empathy, creativity and agility.


  • Digital Capability – Have an in-depth understanding of the “recombinant” nature of digital capabilities. The maturity of a business capability would be based on the ability to deliver on customer needs; or to achieve the desired capability outcome, catalyze organizational maturity and business competitiveness.


  • Digital Innovation – Make a relentless commitment to innovation with an expanded scope. Innovation is more often composed with the full spectrum of light, focus on not only the “hard” innovation such as products or services revolution but also the “soft” innovation such as culture or communication evolution.


  • Digital Intelligence – Intelligence is nothing but the ability to solve problems. A hallmark of the digital age is the proliferation of data being generated. As businesses are moving slowly into an era where Big Data is the starting point - not the end. Digital Transformation concentrates on defining a comprehensive scope of change and then figuring out how to execute it with intelligence and speed.


  • Digital Workforce – The “work is what you do, not where you go” shift is unstoppable. And businesses must be alert to the digital dynamic environment, adapt their workforce planning and development strategies to ensure alignment with future skill requirements.


  • Digital Maturity – The purpose of the radical digitalization is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of customer delight.  Digital makes a profound impact from specific function to business as a whole, the truth is that both the digital world and the physical one are indispensable parts of the business. The real digital transformation taking place today isn’t the replacement of the one by the other, but harmonizing the hybrid nature of digitalization and making the good combinations that create wholly new sources of value and achieve high-level digital maturity.


The shift to digital cuts across sectors, geographies and leadership roles, the digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves. But dealing with the challenge of digital change requires an accelerated digital mindset, taking an end-to-end response, building a comprehensive digital strategy, and rethinking the business and operating models, etc., to orchestrate a digital symphony.



The book “Digital Master” is based on numerous professional digital debates and enriched brainstorming. From doing digital to being digital, may this book share a few insights, throw some light on digital transformation, and create the value for encompassing your digitalization journey. It is the book which was born in the digital era, targets to reach the broad and diversified digital audience, from business leaders and managers to digital professionals and knowledge workers, to help them navigate through the adventurous digital journey and become the ultimate Digital Master.

Digitalization is like a flywheel, and Digital Master are the one riding above it. Surf more Information about Digital Master:




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