Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1381
December 11, 2015
The Shift from “Doing Agile” to “Being Agile”
Doing agile is a set of activities; but being agile is the state of mind, the ongoing capability, and the culture adaptability.
Agile is an emerging methodology to manage software projects. Agility is a business capability to sense, respond, and act to changes. By following a set of Agile principles and philosophy, leading organizations is transforming from “doing Agile,” to “being Agile.” What’s the most important clarity such a journey?Agile transformation is a change in mindset. Agile mindset is about empathy, people-centricity, and improvement. Agile is not about free thinking or doing without structure, Agile does not take less discipline, but needs more engineering and management discipline, so looking at mapping out a transformation plan with introducing change to leadership, training with a rollout plan across the organization, and pilot a team. You can not expect big bang mindset change so you need to start with some initial philosophy and some initial practices that pay off and reinforce, a mindset change is more difficult of a change and involves coaching/training/teaching and important discussions around what Agile is to the team/department/ company.
Most Agile transformation fails in the culture, not in the process. Welcome to the world of complexity... it only gets more complex, not less. The answer to this stems from the fact that most Agile transformation fails in the culture, not in the process. So the answer has to be "No, there isn't a framework which says everything about how we need to make an Agile transformation". There can't be because every organization's culture will throw up different roadblocks to Agile transformation success and the solutions to overcoming those roadblocks will always be different in each situation. So you have to harmonize the heart and mind, to make change sustainable and make the journey more enjoyable.
There are pros and cons to using a lot of the different frameworks for scaling up. If by framework you mean an approach to business transformation that helps people change their mindset, yes such things do exist. There are pros and cons to a lot of the different frameworks (SAFe, LeSS, Nexus, etc.) with some of the obvious being company size and culture. Since many IT organizations are working in a complex domain for each of the Agile transformations, like many other complex endeavors, you should experiment different Agile tools at your disposal to probe, test and adapt with any chosen framework. Following the logic step in designing vsion, with reality covers steps like value stream mapping, improvement, and measure effectiveness and evolve is continuous improvement.
Being customer-centric is one of the most important Agile principles to follow, it means you have to adapt to the customer. It doesn't help to follow an agile process if the customer doesn't understand or buy into it, so a big portion is education and finding common ground. It requires a custom approach that involves understanding the baseline (existing process, culture, people, etc.), the desired state, and not just "I want a checkmark next to agile" but what do you hope the benefits will be, and what can you measure or qualify that would put you in the position to say "this was a success," and then do it to improve agility.
Being Agile means to solve business problems more effectively & collaboratively: Problem solving practice developed over many years shows that breaking big problems into smaller problems is the best way to solve problems. Break them down until you have small enough problems to solve and then solve those small problems. By solving lots of small problems, you solve big problems. Same with business goals, by breaking big goals into smaller goals, each delivers a part of the big goal, you can more easily identify where the real value is and focus on the high value, cutting out the low-value noise. Thus, the best motivation is to have people understand why you need to not just do Agile, but being agile, which is, for many, a challenging, if not impossible. For different organizations, industries, and projects, rationale could be very different, but for sure critical to success... There is no one size fitting all!
Doing agile is a set of activities; but being agile is the state of mind, the ongoing capability, and the culture adaptability. By following twelve Agile principles, not just walking through Agile practices; perceiving the wholeness of the project, not just crafting individual features; laser focusing on business goals and customer satisfaction, not just treating it as a technical challenge, these barriers can be overcome and achieve the next level Agile maturity.
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Digital Master Tuning #113: Three Huge Barriers in Digital Transformation
The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation. -Isaac D'Israeli
Digital makes a profound impact from specific function to business as a whole, the purpose of such radical digitalization is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of customer delight and achieve high performing business result. High mature digital organizations have high-level digital capabilities not only to build digital innovations but also to drive enterprise-wide transformation. However, there are still many roadblocks on the way, and numerous pitfalls to fail the initiatives. Here are three huge barriers in digital transformation, and stop businesses from speeding up and improving agility and maturity.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Peter Drucker First, culture in a company is a collective mindset, attitude, and top-down behaviors and action. The spirit comes from the top. The core of culture has to do with the way people are treated. For example, a good culture requires respect, responsibility, self-discipline, autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Contrast that with a typical corporate culture, which is bureaucracy, centered around control, distrust, external discipline, dependence, and hierarchy. The systems, processes and so forth are the clear manifestation of the leaderships' culture. It is the culture that clearly impacts how those policies, procedures, and rewards that drive behavior. It takes leadership to move things in a new direction and to do that without cultural awareness would just cause the leader to likely run into the same brick walls past leaders have encountered. For example, an organization with a culture of autonomy trust their staff and encourage innovation, and take calculated risks. The focus is based on what you accomplish with flexibility. You can't build true respect unless everyone is seen as a valuable contributor. That means everybody who does the same job is treated the same. No matter what leaders/managers say about values, mission, etc. the behaviors they reward are the clearest indication of the culture they are trying to put in place and they drive and reward those behaviors through the implementation of KPIs, policies, processes, etc. Culture management is an interdependent ecosystem that includes many business factors: The company goals, policies, internal control requirements, customer experience improvements / customer satisfaction, etc., all should be synchronized without compromising the need of any item, staff want to be involved in developing policies and procedures to achieve the organization’s goals, but this has to be meaningful involvement and be seen to be meaningful.
“A bad system will beat a good person every time.” W. Edwards Deming. Either silo thinking, silo management style, or silo processes are outdated because now businesses are always-on, hyperconnected, and interdependent, when silo or bureaucracy manipulates the corporate world or beyond, the talent potential couldn’t be unleashed, and the differentiated business capabilities couldn’t be built up, and business culture wouldn't be innovative. When individual and departmental outcomes are measured, the walls go up. In other words, what are the organization's rewards and recognition structure perpetuating? Differentiated performance metrics and rewards systems tend to bring this shift in perspective about, but they too are a necessary aspect of how an organization operates -- until they become counter-productive and have to be changed. When the collective outcome is the focus, the silo walls collapse. The bad systems are also possibly caused by complicated processes or unnecessary complexity. The complexity can be good or bad for businesses depending on your strategy and capability. Complexity Management is the methodology to minimize value-destroying complexity and efficiently control value-adding complexity in a cross-functional approach.
People are the weakest link in businesses. The multi-faceted talent practitioners need to handle talent paradox: Are employees truly satisfied? Or are they simply accepting their fate by staying with their current employers because of a difficult job market? Employees who believe their employers make effective use of their talent and abilities appear to be overwhelmingly committed to staying on the job, while respondents who said their job does not make good use of their skills are looking to leave. Due to the globalization of the economy, companies must be nimble in managing talent to have the right people in the right place at the right time. The talent practitioners must be capable of becoming:Energizers—capable of breathing new life and energy into their organizations
Culture propagators—able to design people policies and processes to build a winning culture.
Change agents—able to instill in employees the beliefs, values and basic assumptions required for the organization to succeed.
Innovators - able to bring the new perspective, and come out the new/alternative way to do things
Keep in mind of these witty quotes discussed above. Dynamic and changing digital organizations cannot thrive with static or negative culture, silo or over-complicated processes and systems, or complacent, unchanging people. Digital is all about change and exploring! Always frame the right questions before answering them, ensure doing the right things before doing things right. The business will be more successful when they realize that one of their greatest strengths will be their change capability to remove the barriers and lead digital transformation seamlessly.
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Talent Management Brief: See Through Talent from Different Angles Dec. 2015
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.1+million page views with about #2300+ 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.
People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses. “Hiring the right person to the right position at the right time,” is the mantra of many forward-thinking organizations. The question is how would you define the right people? How do you define wrong, average, mediocre, good, great or extraordinary person? Or put simply, for what should they be right? Traditional Performance Management focusing on measuring what an employee does (mainly being told to do) in a quantitative way is not sufficient to identify high performance or high potential, should we see through talent from different angles?
See Through Talent from Different Angles (Part II)Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Profundity. At today’s “VUCA” digital dynamic, businesses become over-complex and hyper-competitive, the leadership bar has been raised, and employee professionalism is part of your business brand. So it is crucial to encourage deep thinking and it is also strategic imperative to bring wisdom in the workplace. The maturity of both individuals and an organization as a whole depends on how thoughtful they are - to make effective decisions or sound judgment; and how deep they can go - to gain the insight or cure the root cause of complex problems.Indeed, profundity is one of the crucial traits to differentiate average, mediocre, good, great or extraordinary person. But how to assess a person’s profundity via questioning.
Three Questions to Evaluate an Employee’s Potential. Modern talent management is both the art and science. However, most of HR organizations still use static mechanisms to measure talent performance, mainly based on quantitative delivery, with ignorance of qualitative perspective, talent potential assessment, intangible culture effect, and lack of tailored solutions to reach the next level of HR maturity. So from talent management perspective, which questions should you ask to assess an employee’s potential? And how to encourage employees to compete for uniqueness, instead of everything? From individual talent development perspective, how to discover who you are, and who you would like to be, hone your skill set and manage your career path more proactively? How to manage your energy and time more effectively? Improving your weakness vs. growing your strength, which one should you focus on?
Three Questions to Assess an Employee’s Dedication. People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses. “Hiring the right person to the right position at the right time,” is the mantra of many forward-thinking organizations. The question is how would you define the right people? How do you define wrong, average, mediocre, good, great or extraordinary person? Or put simply, for what should they be right? Dedication is one of the professional qualities often being ignored because we live in such a “disruptive” digital age full of signals and noises, accelerated changes and distractions, opportunities and temptations. Dedication is the quality of being dedicated or committed to a task or purpose. But how do you assess an employee’s dedication?
Three Questions to Evaluate a Person’s Confidence. People are always the most invaluable asset in organizations, talent managers are always hunting for the best and brightest, but often the best or the brightness need to be assessed via the qualitative lenses, rather than quantitative measurement. Confidence is such an attribute to make one look brighter than others, but where does confidence come from, and how do you present confident, not arrogant?
Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Influence. Every human being will make influences on the surrounding via his/her aura which is the distinctive atmosphere or quality that seems to surround and be generated by a person, thing, or place. Influence is not only a critical leadership capability but also a quality every digital professional need to build because digital is the age of people, every person has a better opportunity to be a leader in his/her own domain. Here are the three questions to assess a person’s influence.Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the 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 the 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.See Through Talent from Different Angle (Part I)Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
December 10, 2015
Agile Debate: Is Vertical Slicing Useful or Detrimental to Agility?
Agile technique or mechanism needs to follow agile principles of Improvement and customer centricity.
Agile as a set of values and principles - a philosophy for customer centricity and improvement. And it is a way people found themselves working. And there are many Agile techniques or mechanisms which were experimented or tested. For example, vertical slices are often related to the dependencies between technical stacks. To avoid people wait for each others for progress, a common approach is to define interfaces and create/generate mocks. So people may focus on their slices, but is it still a “Waterfall” mentality? Or will it be detrimental to agility?
The term Vertical Slice implies a focus on the internal/technical aspects of a system, whereas your customers don't really know or care whether you have completed a Vertical Slice, or just tweaked the UI, as long as their feature/story is delivered. But the trick is to always put yourself in the customer’s position and consider whether the ways in which you break down work affect the time to deliver a single story viewed in isolation. No matter how you slice, you must reach agreements with developers who are the only group of people having most comprehensive knowledge of relationships between slices, vertical or horizontal, after fluent conversations. Otherwise, everyone will be in trouble, working in low efficiency while looking busy (some would interpret as productive and fast?). Ultimately, quality and customer satisfaction matter.
Only some simple projects could be sliced like a cake. The cake is not a good metaphor for typical software projects, and a house/skyscraper could be a better metaphor, with similar dependencies, coupling and cohesion etc. Iteration is more than going horizontally or vertically. Thinking that everything can be vertically sliced with high business value and fit into one sprint means not taking dependencies, complexity and risk seriously, which is ultimately a denial of engineering and reality, especially in the beginning of a project, where the team needs to build some foundations. How to communicate and handle this is another question, but it's more an expectation management issue. Technically, if you want to build a good product, you cannot afford not to take these factors seriously. From a management perspective, there is an equally fair option which is - accepting that one doesn't know how to do it. Agile will eventually effectively minimize the "intermediaries" which by nature, inherently are not adding value, but may be able to assist the others to create business values efficiently.
It also depends on the team’s maturity: When the teams are just starting their agile journey from the traditional waterfall, they generally tend to slice the stories horizontal since they are so used to it. Like design as a story, development as another and testing and so on. But training and particularly coaching the team is essential at this point. The sole reason why user stories exist is to create value. So the teams have to realize that functional slicing of the story doesn't create any value to the user and hence it's not a story but just a task within the story. Once the teams are able to grasp this and apply, they will no more create stories that are functional rather write stories as a whole to create the value. Vertical slices work well for mode-dependent real-time systems where functions must be synchronized and events checked in order to start/stop them. In addition, you need to check for exception conditions at the end of each slice to ensure proper operation and performance of the system. If you are going to slice vertically then your process for the vertical slice needs to cover everything you need to do - either in the work you do for the slice or in the additional work you do per iteration, such as the review and the retrospective.
There is a bit of a philosophical debate here. There are those who believe certain things/aspects need to be developed independently of a feature and others suggest that those aspects are developed as the feature is being developed. There is an equally fair option which is - accepting that one doesn't know how to do it. But alway keep in mind of the philosophy behind the Agile - Interaction, Iteration, and Improvement, and focus on customer satisfaction and speed, not just efficiency.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Agile as a set of values and principles - a philosophy for customer centricity and improvement. And it is a way people found themselves working. And there are many Agile techniques or mechanisms which were experimented or tested. For example, vertical slices are often related to the dependencies between technical stacks. To avoid people wait for each others for progress, a common approach is to define interfaces and create/generate mocks. So people may focus on their slices, but is it still a “Waterfall” mentality? Or will it be detrimental to agility?
The term Vertical Slice implies a focus on the internal/technical aspects of a system, whereas your customers don't really know or care whether you have completed a Vertical Slice, or just tweaked the UI, as long as their feature/story is delivered. But the trick is to always put yourself in the customer’s position and consider whether the ways in which you break down work affect the time to deliver a single story viewed in isolation. No matter how you slice, you must reach agreements with developers who are the only group of people having most comprehensive knowledge of relationships between slices, vertical or horizontal, after fluent conversations. Otherwise, everyone will be in trouble, working in low efficiency while looking busy (some would interpret as productive and fast?). Ultimately, quality and customer satisfaction matter.
Only some simple projects could be sliced like a cake. The cake is not a good metaphor for typical software projects, and a house/skyscraper could be a better metaphor, with similar dependencies, coupling and cohesion etc. Iteration is more than going horizontally or vertically. Thinking that everything can be vertically sliced with high business value and fit into one sprint means not taking dependencies, complexity and risk seriously, which is ultimately a denial of engineering and reality, especially in the beginning of a project, where the team needs to build some foundations. How to communicate and handle this is another question, but it's more an expectation management issue. Technically, if you want to build a good product, you cannot afford not to take these factors seriously. From a management perspective, there is an equally fair option which is - accepting that one doesn't know how to do it. Agile will eventually effectively minimize the "intermediaries" which by nature, inherently are not adding value, but may be able to assist the others to create business values efficiently.
It also depends on the team’s maturity: When the teams are just starting their agile journey from the traditional waterfall, they generally tend to slice the stories horizontal since they are so used to it. Like design as a story, development as another and testing and so on. But training and particularly coaching the team is essential at this point. The sole reason why user stories exist is to create value. So the teams have to realize that functional slicing of the story doesn't create any value to the user and hence it's not a story but just a task within the story. Once the teams are able to grasp this and apply, they will no more create stories that are functional rather write stories as a whole to create the value. Vertical slices work well for mode-dependent real-time systems where functions must be synchronized and events checked in order to start/stop them. In addition, you need to check for exception conditions at the end of each slice to ensure proper operation and performance of the system. If you are going to slice vertically then your process for the vertical slice needs to cover everything you need to do - either in the work you do for the slice or in the additional work you do per iteration, such as the review and the retrospective.
There is a bit of a philosophical debate here. There are those who believe certain things/aspects need to be developed independently of a feature and others suggest that those aspects are developed as the feature is being developed. There is an equally fair option which is - accepting that one doesn't know how to do it. But alway keep in mind of the philosophy behind the Agile - Interaction, Iteration, and Improvement, and focus on customer satisfaction and speed, not just efficiency.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The Monthly Strategy Highlight - Strategy Execution: How Hard Could it Be? Dec. 2015
The strategy is the light to guide you ahead, not the hand to walk you through.
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.2 million page views with 2300+ 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.
A digital strategy is cross-functional effort and multidisciplinary, multidimensional planning; it brings up new functions, roles, and responsibilities, collaboration, demand for intuition and emergence, complementarities, philosophy, neutron sciences, and trans-disciplinary businesses. But these are not new per se. The frameworks of thoughts, consciousness and maturity assessments apply to strategy, then, now and in the future. Here is the monthly strategy highlight of the “Future of CIO” blog.
The Strategy Execution - How Difficult Could it Be? Strategy Execution: How Difficult Could it Be: Nowadays, with increasing speed of change and fierce competition, business strategy execution is no longer linear steps, but a dynamic continuum. If strategy formulation is more important for leading business toward the right direction, then strategy execution is perhaps more difficult due to the business complexity, uncertainty, time/resource consuming, etc. The strategic themes are essentially the pillars of the organization. They include business growth, operational excellence, customer experience excellence, product development, innovation, and sustainability. Strategic perspectives include financial aspect, customers and stakeholders' aspect, internal processes, organizational capability and engaged leadership. Strategy execution: How difficult could it be?
Strategy Execution - How to Keep Focused: If the strategy is more important because it directly impacts which direction should an organization go, then execution is more difficult because it takes time and business alignment to make it work. And there are many pitfalls on the way, also a lot of roadblocks to overcome. So focus, focus, and how to keep focusing on strategy execution?
The inextricable Relationship between Strategy, Culture and Execution: Digital strategy is the compass to navigate through the digital transformation journey in organizations today. So it's important to outline the strategic intent and frame the strategy to be understandable and implementable. Otherwise, people's different interpretations yield many unintended consequences. Then, it is vital to actively socialize the strategy to confirm its intent and understandability by those who will guide the implementation. Here are five aspects in crafting and implementing a digital strategy.
What's Focal Point for Practicing Innovation Strategy? Idea Generation or Capability Building? Today’s business is hyper-competitive and over-complex, there’re so many things going on in the business executives’ agenda, what’s your emphasis point for practicing business strategy -idea creation or capability building? What’s the root cause for business lagging behind: Is it that you do not have the culture to develop new ideas or is it that you are unable to execute them?
How to Improve the Success Rate of Strategy Execution? If strategy making is more important, perhaps strategy execution is more difficult. If the strategy is deciding what to do, then execution is all about making it happen via engaged, competent and committed managers and employees. A recent executive survey indicated that execution excellence was the number one challenge facing corporate leaders globally, but more than two third of organizations struggle to implement their strategy smoothly. Hence, organizations need to address this aggressively to really start cranking up their execution abilities. And what are important factors in executing strategy more successfully?
The 'Golden Ratio' of Strategy Creation vs. Execution: The rapidly changing business dynamic makes strategy creation not less important, but more critical to compete and thrive for the business's long- term thriving. And one of the most crucial tasks for top executives is to spend a significant portion of time to 'Think Strategically.' However, what is the "right" percentage of time spent on creating a vision and strategy vs. execution and results, or what's the "golden ratio" of time-spending in strategy creation vs. execution? Does strategic planning follows 80/20 principle to provide focus on the 20% of activities that will yield 80% future success?
Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the 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 the 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.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.2 million page views with 2300+ 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.
A digital strategy is cross-functional effort and multidisciplinary, multidimensional planning; it brings up new functions, roles, and responsibilities, collaboration, demand for intuition and emergence, complementarities, philosophy, neutron sciences, and trans-disciplinary businesses. But these are not new per se. The frameworks of thoughts, consciousness and maturity assessments apply to strategy, then, now and in the future. Here is the monthly strategy highlight of the “Future of CIO” blog.
The Strategy Execution - How Difficult Could it Be? Strategy Execution: How Difficult Could it Be: Nowadays, with increasing speed of change and fierce competition, business strategy execution is no longer linear steps, but a dynamic continuum. If strategy formulation is more important for leading business toward the right direction, then strategy execution is perhaps more difficult due to the business complexity, uncertainty, time/resource consuming, etc. The strategic themes are essentially the pillars of the organization. They include business growth, operational excellence, customer experience excellence, product development, innovation, and sustainability. Strategic perspectives include financial aspect, customers and stakeholders' aspect, internal processes, organizational capability and engaged leadership. Strategy execution: How difficult could it be?
Strategy Execution - How to Keep Focused: If the strategy is more important because it directly impacts which direction should an organization go, then execution is more difficult because it takes time and business alignment to make it work. And there are many pitfalls on the way, also a lot of roadblocks to overcome. So focus, focus, and how to keep focusing on strategy execution?
The inextricable Relationship between Strategy, Culture and Execution: Digital strategy is the compass to navigate through the digital transformation journey in organizations today. So it's important to outline the strategic intent and frame the strategy to be understandable and implementable. Otherwise, people's different interpretations yield many unintended consequences. Then, it is vital to actively socialize the strategy to confirm its intent and understandability by those who will guide the implementation. Here are five aspects in crafting and implementing a digital strategy.
What's Focal Point for Practicing Innovation Strategy? Idea Generation or Capability Building? Today’s business is hyper-competitive and over-complex, there’re so many things going on in the business executives’ agenda, what’s your emphasis point for practicing business strategy -idea creation or capability building? What’s the root cause for business lagging behind: Is it that you do not have the culture to develop new ideas or is it that you are unable to execute them?
How to Improve the Success Rate of Strategy Execution? If strategy making is more important, perhaps strategy execution is more difficult. If the strategy is deciding what to do, then execution is all about making it happen via engaged, competent and committed managers and employees. A recent executive survey indicated that execution excellence was the number one challenge facing corporate leaders globally, but more than two third of organizations struggle to implement their strategy smoothly. Hence, organizations need to address this aggressively to really start cranking up their execution abilities. And what are important factors in executing strategy more successfully?
The 'Golden Ratio' of Strategy Creation vs. Execution: The rapidly changing business dynamic makes strategy creation not less important, but more critical to compete and thrive for the business's long- term thriving. And one of the most crucial tasks for top executives is to spend a significant portion of time to 'Think Strategically.' However, what is the "right" percentage of time spent on creating a vision and strategy vs. execution and results, or what's the "golden ratio" of time-spending in strategy creation vs. execution? Does strategic planning follows 80/20 principle to provide focus on the 20% of activities that will yield 80% future success?Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the 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 the 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.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three Questions to Assess an Employee’s Dedication
A dedicated mind focuses on thinking, growing or innovating, and their energy flows towards the positive direction.
People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses. “Hiring the right person to the right position at the right time,” is the mantra of many forward-thinking organizations. The question is how would you define the right people? How do you define wrong, average, mediocre, good, great or extraordinary person? Or put simply, for what should they be right? Dedication is one of the professional qualities often being ignored because we live in such a “disruptive” digital age full of signals and noises, accelerated changes and distractions, opportunities and temptations. Dedication is the quality of being dedicated or committed to a task or purpose. But how do you assess an employee’s dedication?
Are you at the career journey in pursuit of Discover, Autonomy, and Mastery? The "work is what you accomplish, not where you go" shift is unstoppable. The future of work will be shaped by changes that take place in the way people relate to themselves and to their experience of their environment and others around them, which will lead to greater autonomy and "self-generated" engagement. A dedicated person is either a high performer or a high potential because he or she has the right attitude to discover and grow, flow the energy toward the positive direction and stay focus. Although the management might not have the wise eyes to discover them because they don't always keep their hands full, but they are more mindful; they do not visit managers' office very often, build social circles or play office politics actively. Dedication has nothing to do with the personality, though, you can be either introvert or extrovert; passionate or cool-headed, but a dedicated one can laser focus on what he or she is doing or want to be. And a dedicated people have the right dose of gravitas which is a mindset with the intention to discover who we are, where we are going to be, whatever the state of awareness we arrive at, there is always a deeper state. l, We have the opportunity to continue learning and sharing. It’s not about acting, it's about how you can generate a specific energy in yourself to help consciously create the authentic impact you choose. Gravitas is neither defined by external environments nor external pressures but is ultimately defined by the character traits that are refined by these external actions and interactions which make up processor journey. When you concentrate or laser focus, you do feel your energy is converging with nature flow, you are part of nature, and empowered by nature as well.
Can you set the right priority and laser focus on the most important things mattering to you or the organization? The interesting fact about dedicated people is that, sometimes, they might look “careless,” or even “fool,” they forget the little things, or they ignore the trivial details, so the average people or management might misunderstand them or amplify their small defect. But the beauty of dedication is such a prioritization mind, it can focus on the most important tasks, or long term goals, spend time and energy on strategic thinking and value-driven activities, talent with such thinking is not easy to get distracted, or to be over-stressful. It is an important thinking skill for today’s multitasking, multi-devicing digital workforce in a workplace full of distraction, because they are more empowered to apply their knowledge, and gives them accountability for what they choose to work on, how to get it done, and understand the purpose of work, to manage their career from “just a job” mentality to autonomy and mastery.
Do you have superior time management skills? At today’s workplace with the information explosion, shorten knowledge lifecycle, and accelerating speed of changes, with the blended remote and multi-locational working environment, time management is more critical than ever, to differentiate a high potential from a mediocre. Time management is all about choosing to help oneself by being able to put in efforts only after you have prepared self to take and bear risks of meeting and facing challenges, spend time and energy wisely in the most crucial works and tasks. Time management helps in planning well, helps not to regret, to differentiate between falsehood and truth. In addition, the effective time management boosts creativity: It makes you creative oriented, mature and generous enough to share insight and wisdom with others. It makes one bold and shed the fear of failure, lethargic tendency and any inability that prevent from progress. Time is the cure for the sad memory, but it’s the hope for the better tomorrow. A dedicated mind with strong time management skill is more creative to come out with new ideas; more productive to contribute better way to do things; more humble to learn the new skills or build the differentiated capabilities, and have better chance to climb to the top level of Maslow’s pyramid - autonomy, independence, purpose, and mastery.
Dedicated people focus on thinking, growing or innovating, their energy flows forward and make a positive influence on corporate culture and bring the wisdom to the workplace. They are the right type of the people who possess the right mindsets and behaviors necessary to move your business in the direction it needs to go; to help realize the vision and values of the organization, they keep learning, innovating and transforming the business for the long-term prosperity.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses. “Hiring the right person to the right position at the right time,” is the mantra of many forward-thinking organizations. The question is how would you define the right people? How do you define wrong, average, mediocre, good, great or extraordinary person? Or put simply, for what should they be right? Dedication is one of the professional qualities often being ignored because we live in such a “disruptive” digital age full of signals and noises, accelerated changes and distractions, opportunities and temptations. Dedication is the quality of being dedicated or committed to a task or purpose. But how do you assess an employee’s dedication?
Are you at the career journey in pursuit of Discover, Autonomy, and Mastery? The "work is what you accomplish, not where you go" shift is unstoppable. The future of work will be shaped by changes that take place in the way people relate to themselves and to their experience of their environment and others around them, which will lead to greater autonomy and "self-generated" engagement. A dedicated person is either a high performer or a high potential because he or she has the right attitude to discover and grow, flow the energy toward the positive direction and stay focus. Although the management might not have the wise eyes to discover them because they don't always keep their hands full, but they are more mindful; they do not visit managers' office very often, build social circles or play office politics actively. Dedication has nothing to do with the personality, though, you can be either introvert or extrovert; passionate or cool-headed, but a dedicated one can laser focus on what he or she is doing or want to be. And a dedicated people have the right dose of gravitas which is a mindset with the intention to discover who we are, where we are going to be, whatever the state of awareness we arrive at, there is always a deeper state. l, We have the opportunity to continue learning and sharing. It’s not about acting, it's about how you can generate a specific energy in yourself to help consciously create the authentic impact you choose. Gravitas is neither defined by external environments nor external pressures but is ultimately defined by the character traits that are refined by these external actions and interactions which make up processor journey. When you concentrate or laser focus, you do feel your energy is converging with nature flow, you are part of nature, and empowered by nature as well.
Can you set the right priority and laser focus on the most important things mattering to you or the organization? The interesting fact about dedicated people is that, sometimes, they might look “careless,” or even “fool,” they forget the little things, or they ignore the trivial details, so the average people or management might misunderstand them or amplify their small defect. But the beauty of dedication is such a prioritization mind, it can focus on the most important tasks, or long term goals, spend time and energy on strategic thinking and value-driven activities, talent with such thinking is not easy to get distracted, or to be over-stressful. It is an important thinking skill for today’s multitasking, multi-devicing digital workforce in a workplace full of distraction, because they are more empowered to apply their knowledge, and gives them accountability for what they choose to work on, how to get it done, and understand the purpose of work, to manage their career from “just a job” mentality to autonomy and mastery.
Do you have superior time management skills? At today’s workplace with the information explosion, shorten knowledge lifecycle, and accelerating speed of changes, with the blended remote and multi-locational working environment, time management is more critical than ever, to differentiate a high potential from a mediocre. Time management is all about choosing to help oneself by being able to put in efforts only after you have prepared self to take and bear risks of meeting and facing challenges, spend time and energy wisely in the most crucial works and tasks. Time management helps in planning well, helps not to regret, to differentiate between falsehood and truth. In addition, the effective time management boosts creativity: It makes you creative oriented, mature and generous enough to share insight and wisdom with others. It makes one bold and shed the fear of failure, lethargic tendency and any inability that prevent from progress. Time is the cure for the sad memory, but it’s the hope for the better tomorrow. A dedicated mind with strong time management skill is more creative to come out with new ideas; more productive to contribute better way to do things; more humble to learn the new skills or build the differentiated capabilities, and have better chance to climb to the top level of Maslow’s pyramid - autonomy, independence, purpose, and mastery.
Dedicated people focus on thinking, growing or innovating, their energy flows forward and make a positive influence on corporate culture and bring the wisdom to the workplace. They are the right type of the people who possess the right mindsets and behaviors necessary to move your business in the direction it needs to go; to help realize the vision and values of the organization, they keep learning, innovating and transforming the business for the long-term prosperity.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
December 9, 2015
CIO’s Digital Agenda XI - Running IT as an Innovation Engine
CIOs as "Chief Innovation Officer," is the most pertinent title for digital IT leaders today.
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.2 million page views with 2300+ 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.
Majority of IT organizations today are still running at industrial speed, stick at the low or mid level of maturity, although technology is more often than not, the disruptive force for business and industry innovation, IT organizations seem to have a tendency to align with the slow changing parts of the organization, so how should CIOs prepare for the digital disruption and speed up accordingly? Here is the CIO’s Digital Agenda to run IT as an innovation engine:
Running IT as an Innovation EngineHow to Run an Innovative IT? Modern IT continues to move up its maturity from a reactive helpdesk, back-office function into a proactive business partner and innovation engine. What are the tips and stories to create a culture of innovation? What are the innovation implications when IT leverages the Cloud model? How shall IT assess their partners for delivering innovative business solutions, should the business pay IT for being innovative thereby enabling business proactively?
CIO’s Innovation Agenda: Modern CIOs have many personas indicated in the magic “I” of CIO title, Chief Innovation Officer is one of the most pertinent roles, because so much business innovation these days is enabled by technology, a good CIO with their finger on the pulse of technological advancement or information insight can provide many ideas on how new tech and abundance of info could create fresh business opportunities. CIOs are uniquely positioned to drive business innovation because of their vantage point in digital transformation. But how can CIO build a solid innovation agenda, and play such a new role more effectively.
Innovation vs. Continuous Improvement: Innovation is the larger umbrella term that encompasses continuous improvement, innovation is also expanding its horizon, goes beyond products/services innovation, it could mean business model/process /culture/leadership innovation, as well. They are either the same or different in many ways.
Three Aspects of IT Innovation: Most of forward-thinking IT organizations are experiencing the digital shift from ‘built to last’ to ‘design to change’; from a back-office support function to a value creator and innovation engine. But how to manage such a digital transformation more seamlessly, what is the primary role of the CIO in harnessing IT innovation and building IT competency and maturity?
IT Paradox: Should Creativity and Process go Hand in Hand? Today, organizations have to compete on a global scale and creativity is not only valuable from a products/service standpoint, but can also add efficiency or effectiveness to IT operations, improving business-IT communication, innovate business culture, and provide for outside-the-box problem-solving capability as well.
How to Maximize the Returns on IT Innovations? Businesses today face fiery competition and rapid digital shift either technologically or economically, most of the organizations are focusing on improving margins by reducing the bottom-line cost rather than top-line growth; as innovation and risk are proportional, improving efficiency takes a little creativity and risk, while working on innovation effort usually takes higher risks and creativity. Still, forward-looking companies will spend more resource on innovation investment in order to reap the fruit for out beating competitors and gaining long term advantage. So the question is how to maximize returns on innovation, specifically, IT innovations, as overall IT project has much lower success rate than other business initiatives.
What are the Pitfalls in Measuring Innovative IT Effectively? IT as an enterprise group is in a bigger identity crisis than ever, the industrial mode of IT running as a cost center no longer satisfies stakeholders and business partner anymore; the digital mode of IT means speed, agility, and innovation. IT needs to become business’s innovation engine, as the intersection of IT and people is where innovation happens! Companies need to invest in IT necessary to make the business advances through either incremental or radical innovation! However, what are the pitfalls in measuring such innovative IT effectively?
IT is well Positioned to be the Innovation Nerve Center of the Organization. The traditional role of CIOs is to manage information, IT systems, and cost, now with information is permeating into every corner of business and digital technologies are more often the cause to innovation disruption, IT has itself transformed to creating a new competitive advantage, new products, and new services. But many of today’s C-suites are unaware of what is technologically possible now or in the future, so do you think IT is well positioned to be the innovation nerve center yet?
Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; 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 the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.2 million page views with 2300+ 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.
Majority of IT organizations today are still running at industrial speed, stick at the low or mid level of maturity, although technology is more often than not, the disruptive force for business and industry innovation, IT organizations seem to have a tendency to align with the slow changing parts of the organization, so how should CIOs prepare for the digital disruption and speed up accordingly? Here is the CIO’s Digital Agenda to run IT as an innovation engine:
Running IT as an Innovation EngineHow to Run an Innovative IT? Modern IT continues to move up its maturity from a reactive helpdesk, back-office function into a proactive business partner and innovation engine. What are the tips and stories to create a culture of innovation? What are the innovation implications when IT leverages the Cloud model? How shall IT assess their partners for delivering innovative business solutions, should the business pay IT for being innovative thereby enabling business proactively?
CIO’s Innovation Agenda: Modern CIOs have many personas indicated in the magic “I” of CIO title, Chief Innovation Officer is one of the most pertinent roles, because so much business innovation these days is enabled by technology, a good CIO with their finger on the pulse of technological advancement or information insight can provide many ideas on how new tech and abundance of info could create fresh business opportunities. CIOs are uniquely positioned to drive business innovation because of their vantage point in digital transformation. But how can CIO build a solid innovation agenda, and play such a new role more effectively.
Innovation vs. Continuous Improvement: Innovation is the larger umbrella term that encompasses continuous improvement, innovation is also expanding its horizon, goes beyond products/services innovation, it could mean business model/process /culture/leadership innovation, as well. They are either the same or different in many ways.
Three Aspects of IT Innovation: Most of forward-thinking IT organizations are experiencing the digital shift from ‘built to last’ to ‘design to change’; from a back-office support function to a value creator and innovation engine. But how to manage such a digital transformation more seamlessly, what is the primary role of the CIO in harnessing IT innovation and building IT competency and maturity?
IT Paradox: Should Creativity and Process go Hand in Hand? Today, organizations have to compete on a global scale and creativity is not only valuable from a products/service standpoint, but can also add efficiency or effectiveness to IT operations, improving business-IT communication, innovate business culture, and provide for outside-the-box problem-solving capability as well.
How to Maximize the Returns on IT Innovations? Businesses today face fiery competition and rapid digital shift either technologically or economically, most of the organizations are focusing on improving margins by reducing the bottom-line cost rather than top-line growth; as innovation and risk are proportional, improving efficiency takes a little creativity and risk, while working on innovation effort usually takes higher risks and creativity. Still, forward-looking companies will spend more resource on innovation investment in order to reap the fruit for out beating competitors and gaining long term advantage. So the question is how to maximize returns on innovation, specifically, IT innovations, as overall IT project has much lower success rate than other business initiatives.
What are the Pitfalls in Measuring Innovative IT Effectively? IT as an enterprise group is in a bigger identity crisis than ever, the industrial mode of IT running as a cost center no longer satisfies stakeholders and business partner anymore; the digital mode of IT means speed, agility, and innovation. IT needs to become business’s innovation engine, as the intersection of IT and people is where innovation happens! Companies need to invest in IT necessary to make the business advances through either incremental or radical innovation! However, what are the pitfalls in measuring such innovative IT effectively?
IT is well Positioned to be the Innovation Nerve Center of the Organization. The traditional role of CIOs is to manage information, IT systems, and cost, now with information is permeating into every corner of business and digital technologies are more often the cause to innovation disruption, IT has itself transformed to creating a new competitive advantage, new products, and new services. But many of today’s C-suites are unaware of what is technologically possible now or in the future, so do you think IT is well positioned to be the innovation nerve center yet?Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; 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 the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three Aspects of Leadership as Capability
The hard core of leadership capabilities strengthens leadership effectiveness and highlights leadership substance.
Leadership is often understood as soft skills, but in substance, leadership is a distinctive capability with “hardcore” -knowledge, insight, and wisdom. Capabilities are an accumulation of competencies or recombinant skills (both hard and soft) which are used for achieving the strategic goals. Leadership is about future, future implicates changes and innovation. Leadership is influence, the leader’s influence is based on the ability to inspire, confidence to assert, wisdom to negotiate, and uniqueness to bridging. Here are three aspects of leadership as capability:
Influence ability: It is not possible to separate influence from leadership. Influence and persuasion are so closely linked they are probably the same thing. To lead you to need to persuade others to follow and do things you envision to achieve, they will not follow unless they are influenced by the leaders' clear vision and the capability to persuasion. And vision, knowledge, insight, and wisdom are the best instrument to make a long-lasting influence. There are various levels at which leadership is exercised. At its core leadership is about influencing people to act in a particular way. What leadership focuses on is about leading with purpose and intent to achieve particular objectives. Leadership is about identifying and envisioning a worthy objective, and engaging people to work towards that objective. The leadership responsibility falls in the ability of the leaders to be an example to follow. Great leaders are not afraid to follow as well. If you are leading and not willing to learn, grow and share then you are just talking the talking without leadership effectiveness.
Intellectual decision-making & problem-solving capability: One of the significant works for leaders is to make decisions. Being decisive, getting to the root cause, defining problems are all important, but very few can get them all right. It is a distinctive leadership ability to differentiate a great leader from average managers. What keeps leaders successful is their intellectual curiosity and ability to continuously be open to learning and applying these learnings as they move forward. The authentic leaders with high intelligence have adaptability, consistency, profundity, and empathy to master business dynamic and cultural differences. They present the ability to manage COMPLEXITY in high digital transparency and stressful digital dynamic. Know what gives you joy. Know your talents. Make decisions that help others via empathy and solving problems via digging into root causes. Build teams that build up the members of the team. Don't break people down. With overloading information and shortened knowledge lifecycle, leaders’ capability is less about how to answer all questions, but how to be able to re-frame the problems by asking the right questions to gain collective wisdom to make effective decisions.
Managing Strategy-Execution capability: Digitalization means change, the consistent flow, the continuous improvement and the persistent pursuit. Leaders need to learn, delearn and relearn all the time. With the accelerated speed of changes, high-capable leaders have to continue to sharpen skills and build the distinctive capability to lead more effectively. Execution has to connect more non-linear dots. It is a broadened arena which has to connect more non-linear dots and take multi-disciplinary understanding. Business leaders need to find new ways to hasten their collective best thinking efforts – especially in larger organizations, where it is crucial that one does not exclusively rely on his/her own limited brain-power. Large groups can interact and be able to divide and conquer a complex challenge to accelerate your solution forming capabilities if done right. Leadership is neither a title nor a paper certificate; neither a soft skill only or a few spotlight moments. It's a capability to make a continuous delivery and maintain a consistent reputation. The hard core of leadership capabilities strengthens leadership effectiveness and highlights leadership substance. Leadership effectiveness is based on leader’s influence intelligence - not just a title, but the heart-touching and mind connecting empathy; a clear vision, not just descriptive communication; adaptability not just controlling; insight and wisdom, not just knowledge; with the ability in making the right decision, building capability-based strategy and execute it cohesively.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Leadership is often understood as soft skills, but in substance, leadership is a distinctive capability with “hardcore” -knowledge, insight, and wisdom. Capabilities are an accumulation of competencies or recombinant skills (both hard and soft) which are used for achieving the strategic goals. Leadership is about future, future implicates changes and innovation. Leadership is influence, the leader’s influence is based on the ability to inspire, confidence to assert, wisdom to negotiate, and uniqueness to bridging. Here are three aspects of leadership as capability:
Influence ability: It is not possible to separate influence from leadership. Influence and persuasion are so closely linked they are probably the same thing. To lead you to need to persuade others to follow and do things you envision to achieve, they will not follow unless they are influenced by the leaders' clear vision and the capability to persuasion. And vision, knowledge, insight, and wisdom are the best instrument to make a long-lasting influence. There are various levels at which leadership is exercised. At its core leadership is about influencing people to act in a particular way. What leadership focuses on is about leading with purpose and intent to achieve particular objectives. Leadership is about identifying and envisioning a worthy objective, and engaging people to work towards that objective. The leadership responsibility falls in the ability of the leaders to be an example to follow. Great leaders are not afraid to follow as well. If you are leading and not willing to learn, grow and share then you are just talking the talking without leadership effectiveness.
Intellectual decision-making & problem-solving capability: One of the significant works for leaders is to make decisions. Being decisive, getting to the root cause, defining problems are all important, but very few can get them all right. It is a distinctive leadership ability to differentiate a great leader from average managers. What keeps leaders successful is their intellectual curiosity and ability to continuously be open to learning and applying these learnings as they move forward. The authentic leaders with high intelligence have adaptability, consistency, profundity, and empathy to master business dynamic and cultural differences. They present the ability to manage COMPLEXITY in high digital transparency and stressful digital dynamic. Know what gives you joy. Know your talents. Make decisions that help others via empathy and solving problems via digging into root causes. Build teams that build up the members of the team. Don't break people down. With overloading information and shortened knowledge lifecycle, leaders’ capability is less about how to answer all questions, but how to be able to re-frame the problems by asking the right questions to gain collective wisdom to make effective decisions.
Managing Strategy-Execution capability: Digitalization means change, the consistent flow, the continuous improvement and the persistent pursuit. Leaders need to learn, delearn and relearn all the time. With the accelerated speed of changes, high-capable leaders have to continue to sharpen skills and build the distinctive capability to lead more effectively. Execution has to connect more non-linear dots. It is a broadened arena which has to connect more non-linear dots and take multi-disciplinary understanding. Business leaders need to find new ways to hasten their collective best thinking efforts – especially in larger organizations, where it is crucial that one does not exclusively rely on his/her own limited brain-power. Large groups can interact and be able to divide and conquer a complex challenge to accelerate your solution forming capabilities if done right. Leadership is neither a title nor a paper certificate; neither a soft skill only or a few spotlight moments. It's a capability to make a continuous delivery and maintain a consistent reputation. The hard core of leadership capabilities strengthens leadership effectiveness and highlights leadership substance. Leadership effectiveness is based on leader’s influence intelligence - not just a title, but the heart-touching and mind connecting empathy; a clear vision, not just descriptive communication; adaptability not just controlling; insight and wisdom, not just knowledge; with the ability in making the right decision, building capability-based strategy and execute it cohesively.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three Mentalities Enlarge Digital Gaps
One of the most influencing aspects on people's psychology is how they perceive the world around and how they relate to it.
Businesses and the world are hyperconnected today, the oceans, mountains, and deserts can no longer divide us, however, there are still walls in people’s hearts, and there are gaps in people’s minds. here are three mentalities or thought processes which enlarge digital gaps, and stifle digital flows.
Silo thinking: Silo mentality is a common challenge for lots of organizations. Are silos a mere product of organizational design? Or is their nature tied to a deeper level: the humankind's nature? Although many organizations are on the digital journey, try to form away from the traditional rigid hierarchies managed through command and control to more fluid and responsive network forms. Yet many business managers still apply old silo management mindsets to new ways of organizing and this legacy of the old economy limits many digital organizations to unleash their full growth potential. Despite the mountain of evidence pointing the detrimental effects of these silos, they still seem to be quite common in organizations. Silos are a method of containment and storage: bounded groups or insular tribes are evidence of silos, and silos are reservoirs for homogeneous thinking, fingerpointing, unhealthy internal competitions, and limiting the organization's creativity and innovation. It is the responsibility of the leaders to initiate his or her team to break the silos to realize the common goals or strategy which are far more important than the personal and departmental goals. Fostering collaboration is the key to creating a seamless organization when in pursuit of a strategy. In essence, with silo mentality, organizations lose their collaborative advantage as they are being over managed and under led, remain disconnected, hoard knowledge and power within silos, and do not have the competence to collaborate in the long term.
Bi-polar thinking: The digital world is nonlinear and ambiguous, also multi-dimensional and colorful. However, many leaders and business professionals still keep the old “bipolar thinking” habits at the industrial age, for many of them, people are either good or bad, friend or enemy; things are either right or wrong; win or lose; the state is either blue or red, and the world is either black or white; there are no shades in between. Either you call it “extreme thinking,” “binary thinking,” or “bipolar thinking,” such mind is too rigid in the outlook; too judgmental in managing relationship; too static to sense the change; too silo to think the big picture, and too linear to fit in the non-linear digital world. More often, the binary thinking just focuses on the symptoms, and lack of systems thinking and interdependent thinking capability, only catches the conventional understanding of content, not the contextual insight beneath the surface; in addition, group level binary thinking is caused by the homogeneous team setting, from the industry study, group polarization means that a group of people can make a more extreme decision than an individual. You'd think that a group would tend to democratize the diversified viewpoint and to moderate individual points of view. In fact, the opposite often occurs: In a phenomenon known as group polarization (the group of people more often “think the same,”), deliberation can intensify people’s attitudes, leading to more extreme decisions.
Bias thinking: "Don't judge a book by its cover," we are all familiar with this mantra, but, unfortunately, we do live in an increasingly "profiled" world that does judge a book by its cover. Due to the cognitive gaps and cultural limitation, in all fairness, we are all biased in varying degrees and sometimes, we aren't even aware of our own biases, it seems people all over the world are wearing “blinders,” each person’s myopia shuts them off from a reality to some degree. The labels and judgments we place upon each other, are nothing more than barriers that keep us disconnected from one another. Workplace management is a microcosm of the larger society and that we are participating knowingly or unknowingly of the perpetuation of our biases and prejudices, the stereotypical thinking and conventional wisdom. Remove the old thinking habits, and add the new thinking ingredients, to overcome superficiality. Superficiality means to focus on just symptoms, not root causes; only catch the conventional understanding of content, not the contextual insight beneath the surface; the quantity over quality; the close-mindedness, the stereotypical thinking or pre-conceived ideas about how things should happen; or to put simply, it's just skin deep. To cure superficiality, the old cliche comes to mind: two sides to a coin; one complements the other. All wisdom has some paradoxical theme. The depth of perspective and the strength of character is what we need today to deepen the mind, not more of the same old paradigm. We can do better. There is no magic “thinking sauce” to make one’s mind profound, but learning, delearning, relearning; and continuous learning are the healthy cycles to make one’s view fresh and keep one’s mind sharpened to adapt to the digital speed of the changes. To overcome the common challenges and advance human race, we have to really dig beneath the superficial layer, see around the corner and transcend the interdisciplinary knowledge, to get to the heart of the matter; not just watch, but perceive; not just listen to what’s been said, but pay more attention to not being said; be critical and creative at the same time, to break through your thinking ceilings.
One of the most influencing aspects on people's psychology is how they perceive the world around and how they relate to it. This is a function of things like intelligence, basic mental framework, and the collective psychology shapes the culture of organization, how people think and do things in the organization, by understanding the proving psychological concept and practicing them, businesses can instill the positive psychology to their workforce, build culture of learning and innovation, close the gaps created by outdated mentality, and ultimately achieve high performance result.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Businesses and the world are hyperconnected today, the oceans, mountains, and deserts can no longer divide us, however, there are still walls in people’s hearts, and there are gaps in people’s minds. here are three mentalities or thought processes which enlarge digital gaps, and stifle digital flows.Silo thinking: Silo mentality is a common challenge for lots of organizations. Are silos a mere product of organizational design? Or is their nature tied to a deeper level: the humankind's nature? Although many organizations are on the digital journey, try to form away from the traditional rigid hierarchies managed through command and control to more fluid and responsive network forms. Yet many business managers still apply old silo management mindsets to new ways of organizing and this legacy of the old economy limits many digital organizations to unleash their full growth potential. Despite the mountain of evidence pointing the detrimental effects of these silos, they still seem to be quite common in organizations. Silos are a method of containment and storage: bounded groups or insular tribes are evidence of silos, and silos are reservoirs for homogeneous thinking, fingerpointing, unhealthy internal competitions, and limiting the organization's creativity and innovation. It is the responsibility of the leaders to initiate his or her team to break the silos to realize the common goals or strategy which are far more important than the personal and departmental goals. Fostering collaboration is the key to creating a seamless organization when in pursuit of a strategy. In essence, with silo mentality, organizations lose their collaborative advantage as they are being over managed and under led, remain disconnected, hoard knowledge and power within silos, and do not have the competence to collaborate in the long term.
Bi-polar thinking: The digital world is nonlinear and ambiguous, also multi-dimensional and colorful. However, many leaders and business professionals still keep the old “bipolar thinking” habits at the industrial age, for many of them, people are either good or bad, friend or enemy; things are either right or wrong; win or lose; the state is either blue or red, and the world is either black or white; there are no shades in between. Either you call it “extreme thinking,” “binary thinking,” or “bipolar thinking,” such mind is too rigid in the outlook; too judgmental in managing relationship; too static to sense the change; too silo to think the big picture, and too linear to fit in the non-linear digital world. More often, the binary thinking just focuses on the symptoms, and lack of systems thinking and interdependent thinking capability, only catches the conventional understanding of content, not the contextual insight beneath the surface; in addition, group level binary thinking is caused by the homogeneous team setting, from the industry study, group polarization means that a group of people can make a more extreme decision than an individual. You'd think that a group would tend to democratize the diversified viewpoint and to moderate individual points of view. In fact, the opposite often occurs: In a phenomenon known as group polarization (the group of people more often “think the same,”), deliberation can intensify people’s attitudes, leading to more extreme decisions.
Bias thinking: "Don't judge a book by its cover," we are all familiar with this mantra, but, unfortunately, we do live in an increasingly "profiled" world that does judge a book by its cover. Due to the cognitive gaps and cultural limitation, in all fairness, we are all biased in varying degrees and sometimes, we aren't even aware of our own biases, it seems people all over the world are wearing “blinders,” each person’s myopia shuts them off from a reality to some degree. The labels and judgments we place upon each other, are nothing more than barriers that keep us disconnected from one another. Workplace management is a microcosm of the larger society and that we are participating knowingly or unknowingly of the perpetuation of our biases and prejudices, the stereotypical thinking and conventional wisdom. Remove the old thinking habits, and add the new thinking ingredients, to overcome superficiality. Superficiality means to focus on just symptoms, not root causes; only catch the conventional understanding of content, not the contextual insight beneath the surface; the quantity over quality; the close-mindedness, the stereotypical thinking or pre-conceived ideas about how things should happen; or to put simply, it's just skin deep. To cure superficiality, the old cliche comes to mind: two sides to a coin; one complements the other. All wisdom has some paradoxical theme. The depth of perspective and the strength of character is what we need today to deepen the mind, not more of the same old paradigm. We can do better. There is no magic “thinking sauce” to make one’s mind profound, but learning, delearning, relearning; and continuous learning are the healthy cycles to make one’s view fresh and keep one’s mind sharpened to adapt to the digital speed of the changes. To overcome the common challenges and advance human race, we have to really dig beneath the superficial layer, see around the corner and transcend the interdisciplinary knowledge, to get to the heart of the matter; not just watch, but perceive; not just listen to what’s been said, but pay more attention to not being said; be critical and creative at the same time, to break through your thinking ceilings.One of the most influencing aspects on people's psychology is how they perceive the world around and how they relate to it. This is a function of things like intelligence, basic mental framework, and the collective psychology shapes the culture of organization, how people think and do things in the organization, by understanding the proving psychological concept and practicing them, businesses can instill the positive psychology to their workforce, build culture of learning and innovation, close the gaps created by outdated mentality, and ultimately achieve high performance result.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
December 7, 2015
CIO’s Digital Agenda XI: How to Improve IT Governance Maturity
Governance is like a steer-wheel, to ensure enterprise running in the right direction.
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.1 million page views with 2300+ 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. Governance is like a steer-wheel (governance is "steer" in Greece), to ensure enterprise running in the right direction, and well-head to the destination. Corporate governance is not only about governing operations and tactical efforts. It is or should be equally about governing the evolution of the company. Otherwise, the company, no matter how good the governance is, will fail because of a lack of vision and strategic direction. IT governance is a subcomponent of corporate governance and a fundamental business necessity, how to manage it in an effective and holistic way?
How to Improve IT Governance Maturity GRC Methodology vs. Technology?- Digital technologies bring significant opportunities and risks in today’s businesses. Hence, GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) plays a more important role in running an effective organization. GRC methodology vs. technology, how to balance them right in improving organizational agility and maturity?
Why is IT governance so difficult to implement? Governance is like a steering wheel, keeps their business toward the right direction, IT governance plays a significant role in setting guidance and principles to manage business’s information system which is the lifeblood of today’s always-on and hyper-connected digital business. IT governance is converging with business governance, because nowadays IT is business, and business’s IT, but why is IT governance so difficult to implement?
Why Successful IT Absolutely Needs Project Governance? Project Governance, or more broadly IT governance’s magic lies in guiding an organization from beginning to maturity. Lay out the formula, implement it, and corporate leaders say: “that does make sense.” Good governance takes into consideration of the organization's ability to absorb more change or invest more in technology, as well as IT ability to execute the changes requested. IT cannot or should not take on additional projects for reasons outside of how overwhelmed IT is. One big stumbling block is being able to measure time spent on current projects and then estimate resources for future projects.
Innovation Governance: Innovation is about managing novel ideas to achieve its business values. Governance is to steer, oversight, and monitor business management. Innovation and governance seem to be the opposite practice. Do individuals believe governance is essential to effective business innovation and that the two are interdependent? Or do individuals believe governance is incompatible wth or even stifle innovation and leads ultimately to company failure? Innovation governance, how to get it right?
How to Improve IT Governance Maturity: IT plays a significant role in running modern enterprise; more often than not, technology is the business differentiator and innovation engine for business’s growth; also the failure of IT projects can directly impact business’s bottom line. What is the best approach to begin implementing formal IT Governance specifically aimed at optimizing the quality of demand? How can the "competition" for finite dollars be structured so that the end game, best benefit for the enterprise, is achieved?
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