Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1386
November 21, 2015
Three Questions to Evaluate an Employee’s Potential
Performance keeps the business moving, and the potential makes the business grow, transform, and leap to the next level of maturity.
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?
Do you have a growth mind with the adaptation to changes? The talent employees with growth mind continue their journey to pursue autonomy, purpose, and mastery. From talent management perspective, the growth mindset is utmost quality for being a right fit, because the power of the mind is the force to change the business or even the world for better. The premise is that you should hire the growth mind, capability and intelligence, not just specific skills, as the skills change so rapidly due to the shortened knowledge and technology life cycle. But how to create a structured approaches for assessing and evaluating not only the behaviors, but digging through to mindset level: how do people think, why do they think that way, and how do they approach problems and solve problems, so you can easily and consistently differentiate high potential-the future high performers from mediocre mindset in your organization. And, of course, you can also use your discoveries to find and recruit high potentials with hard-wire attitude and multi-dimensional intelligent minds into your culture. The great culture catalyzes positive mind, attitude, and behaviors; but discourage the negativity and unprofessionalism.
Do you have learning agility to leap from one learning curve to the other all the time? Besides the dynamic business and global environment keep throwing a new set of situations to deal with, today business environment makes it imperative that people need to have ability & agility to adapt to such changes, mental agility will be as important as the personality or characteristics. The management process/practice begins with the digital professionals discovering ways to challenge current thinking, beliefs, and assumptions about important elements of the organization. The digital professionals need to be encouraged to explore different possibilities and think in new, innovative ways. Those who are learning agile continuously seek new challenges, solicit direct feedback, unleash the potentials, self-driven, and accomplish the work resourcefully. High potential is usually more innovative because they see unique patterns and make fresh connections that others overlook. As changes are expedited for both business and individuals, and neither business nor life is linear these days, the capabilities to adapt to unpredictable is critical, and the best way one can compete is the ability to leap from one learning curve to the next. High performers may be at the top of their game at the moment, but the question is how well will they adapt to changes, having learning agility or their innate capability. This is where potential comes into play. Potential is about future performance, not past performance. How well does the individual continue to perform and grow in their current roles, how likely are they to take on new challenges at work, rapidly learn and grow into next-level roles, or roles that are expanded and redefined as business changes? Individuals showing potential are distinguished usually by their mastery of new roles quickly and effectively, learning more rapidly than their peers, more innovate to overcome challenges.
Who are you and what is your strength? Discover the strength and uniqueness, it’s whatever you are motivated to work on. The next step is investigating what’s your strength, your passion: defining your task, things you want to do and do better than others. It is more impactful to work on improving your strengths as this is where you can work in your sweet spot. Our strengths are where our natural talents lie, they energize us and point to where we can be most successful - so the trick is to know what your strengths are (realized and unrealized), and then strengthen your strength. For example, are you a specialist, or a specialized generalist? Are you more as a big picture strategist or a tactical doer? The emphasis is on trying to determine which competencies or capabilities should be used in which combination, and with what level of weight for each, for every different situation. Learn self-awareness, engage in reflective practice: Indeed it is at two-level reflection: (a) personally- who are you and what is happening in your life that influences your career pursuit. To be "authentic" and genuine first and foremost, ensuring that your voice and actions are in synchronization by combined action, endurance, and with the right spirit. This must be relevant within boundaries to maintain professionalism in the organization. (b) professionally- are you a business innovator or a change agent, a thinker or a doer. Generally speaking, you should build upon your strengths and talents. The ROI on building your strengths is always higher. From talent management perspective, there is something here also about matching your strengths with what the business needs so there may be a need to hone, adapt or even play down the strength to ensure you fit with the business direction. Because business capability is collective and amplified human capability well aligned with processes, technologies, culture etc. to achieve the expected business result.
If performance focuses on today, and then potential is more about the future. The potential is the ability and interest to take on more responsibilities in the future which is displayed by their thought leadership, unique capability, or exemplified behavior; Performance keeps the business moving, and the potential makes the business grow, transform, and leap to the next level of maturity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
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?
Do you have a growth mind with the adaptation to changes? The talent employees with growth mind continue their journey to pursue autonomy, purpose, and mastery. From talent management perspective, the growth mindset is utmost quality for being a right fit, because the power of the mind is the force to change the business or even the world for better. The premise is that you should hire the growth mind, capability and intelligence, not just specific skills, as the skills change so rapidly due to the shortened knowledge and technology life cycle. But how to create a structured approaches for assessing and evaluating not only the behaviors, but digging through to mindset level: how do people think, why do they think that way, and how do they approach problems and solve problems, so you can easily and consistently differentiate high potential-the future high performers from mediocre mindset in your organization. And, of course, you can also use your discoveries to find and recruit high potentials with hard-wire attitude and multi-dimensional intelligent minds into your culture. The great culture catalyzes positive mind, attitude, and behaviors; but discourage the negativity and unprofessionalism.
Do you have learning agility to leap from one learning curve to the other all the time? Besides the dynamic business and global environment keep throwing a new set of situations to deal with, today business environment makes it imperative that people need to have ability & agility to adapt to such changes, mental agility will be as important as the personality or characteristics. The management process/practice begins with the digital professionals discovering ways to challenge current thinking, beliefs, and assumptions about important elements of the organization. The digital professionals need to be encouraged to explore different possibilities and think in new, innovative ways. Those who are learning agile continuously seek new challenges, solicit direct feedback, unleash the potentials, self-driven, and accomplish the work resourcefully. High potential is usually more innovative because they see unique patterns and make fresh connections that others overlook. As changes are expedited for both business and individuals, and neither business nor life is linear these days, the capabilities to adapt to unpredictable is critical, and the best way one can compete is the ability to leap from one learning curve to the next. High performers may be at the top of their game at the moment, but the question is how well will they adapt to changes, having learning agility or their innate capability. This is where potential comes into play. Potential is about future performance, not past performance. How well does the individual continue to perform and grow in their current roles, how likely are they to take on new challenges at work, rapidly learn and grow into next-level roles, or roles that are expanded and redefined as business changes? Individuals showing potential are distinguished usually by their mastery of new roles quickly and effectively, learning more rapidly than their peers, more innovate to overcome challenges.
Who are you and what is your strength? Discover the strength and uniqueness, it’s whatever you are motivated to work on. The next step is investigating what’s your strength, your passion: defining your task, things you want to do and do better than others. It is more impactful to work on improving your strengths as this is where you can work in your sweet spot. Our strengths are where our natural talents lie, they energize us and point to where we can be most successful - so the trick is to know what your strengths are (realized and unrealized), and then strengthen your strength. For example, are you a specialist, or a specialized generalist? Are you more as a big picture strategist or a tactical doer? The emphasis is on trying to determine which competencies or capabilities should be used in which combination, and with what level of weight for each, for every different situation. Learn self-awareness, engage in reflective practice: Indeed it is at two-level reflection: (a) personally- who are you and what is happening in your life that influences your career pursuit. To be "authentic" and genuine first and foremost, ensuring that your voice and actions are in synchronization by combined action, endurance, and with the right spirit. This must be relevant within boundaries to maintain professionalism in the organization. (b) professionally- are you a business innovator or a change agent, a thinker or a doer. Generally speaking, you should build upon your strengths and talents. The ROI on building your strengths is always higher. From talent management perspective, there is something here also about matching your strengths with what the business needs so there may be a need to hone, adapt or even play down the strength to ensure you fit with the business direction. Because business capability is collective and amplified human capability well aligned with processes, technologies, culture etc. to achieve the expected business result.
If performance focuses on today, and then potential is more about the future. The potential is the ability and interest to take on more responsibilities in the future which is displayed by their thought leadership, unique capability, or exemplified behavior; Performance keeps the business moving, and the potential makes the business grow, transform, and leap to the next level of maturity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
November 20, 2015
Three “Q”s to Run a High-Mature Digital IT
Information Management means to have the right people getting the right information to make the right decisions at the right time.
Cross-industry sectors, IT organizations are shifting from a technology support center of a company into an information steward of business. Managing information and the information position of an organization is what ought to be called Information Management. Information Management means to have the right people get the right information to make the right decisions at the right time. And that information has the right quality (actual, right, complete,...) and quantity (the volume of data, etc) and the information is used properly. It is a strategic imperative for managing information effectively in driving digital transformation. Besides triple “I”s - Information, Innovation, and Integration, triple “A”s - Automation, Analysis, and Agility, triple “C”s - Change, Collaboration, and Cloudification, triple “P”s - Principle, Process, and Performance, triple “E”s Enablement, Exploration, and Effectiveness & Efficiency, triple “V”s - Vision, Value, and Variety, triple “F”s - Fast, Flow, and Flexibility; triple "T" factors - Transformation, Transparency, and Talent Management; triple “S” factors: Strategy, Speed, and Simplicity; triple “D” factors - Data, DevOp, and Design, here we introduce three “Q” factors in running a high-mature digital IT:
Quality: The "people, process, technology" must be defined and maintained to support the quality goal of IT organization. The focus is necessary to maintain or improve quality because there can be positive impacts as well as negative needs to be on organizational capabilities with technology as a key ingredient. The right people -those who share the business objective and have the requisite skills to deliver it, using processes that are valid and evolving can adapt and adopt technology that maintains and expands capabilities that support strategies and priorities in accordance with the corporate culture. From PM perspective, the big Q - Quality is a function of scope, budget, and resources.This is why Agile approach involves users early in a process of creation the "things," and uses them continuously to "assure quality." From data management perspective, by “quality data” – it means clean, organized, actionable data from which to extract relevant information and insight. Data quality does not end with managing the incorrect entry of information, but the logic of data has to be taken into account too. From talent management perspective, high-quality leader or employees are great in attitude, aptitude, and altitude -a winning mixture composed of character, intelligence and competence in a humble frame of self-esteem which makes aware of his/her quality without needing to show them. They must be anchored to a full professionalism; also made of personal qualities such as, independent judgment, critical thinking, professionalism and sense of responsibility and balance through which it becomes possible to earn the role of trust and guiding the organization in which they work, the respect and trust of others. and become a value constructor. These are the multidimensional understanding of quality in running a digital IT.
Quantity: As Drucker wisely put: you can only manage what you measure. The quantitative measurement helps management continue improving IT efficiency. The senior leadership team should ask every department how much the IT service is worth to them. Each department will need to measure that in a way appropriate to their business function. The things that can be measured from within the IT function are all surrogates for real performance indicators. Measuring them and improving their scores will probably improve the actual performance of the IT function, such as IT Savings (IT work which positively impacts the bottom line); IT expense as a percentage of sales. IT spend per employee. IT employees as a percentage of total employees. Uptime % for business critical systems. Customer service % of positive responses. Utilization of key IT managed resources. Total Cost of IT ) includes all costs associated with building, running and operating the IT environment and includes workforce costs, license costs, hardware costs, software costs, systems costs, outsourcing costs, a portion of HR costs, etc. (In other words, more than just the IT budget). IT ROI Ratio = (Net Operating Revenue – (Total Expenses – TCIT))/TCIT. Return on IT Investment = Net Operating Profit / TCIT.
Questioning: Modern CIOs lead by questioning, asking the right questions is both the art and science. The CIO role is a challenging perch to sit on. Whilst they need to ensure their IT department keeps the lights on, continually improves, provide the IT enablement to allow the business to grow. Effective IT leaders navigate their leadership through continuous asking: “Who, Who not, Where, Where not, What, What not, When, When not, Why, Why not, How, and How not” Ask the right questions for ensuring doing the right things before doing things right. Ask the right question by using business vocabulary if possible. Too often, when asking questions, you tend to assume that the people who are answering actually understand your language. Many times, that is not the case and leads to a misalignment between "what you need" vs. "what you get."An effective leader not only asks a deep “WHY” - to diagnose the root cause of problems but also asks the positive “Why NOT?" -The refusal to be bound by constraints and limitations and a pursuit of possibilities rather than impossibilities seems to be a hallmark of great leadership achievements. A true leader has vision and insight to ask “What If & How about.” A truly great leader would ask “What if we do things in a new way” or 'How can I make things better for the whole?'. The one with insight sees what everyone would want to see, if only you had his/her eyes. A good leader asks the questions anyone would want to ask, if only you had his/her perspective. A great leader provides the vision to achieve the results that all would want to go if you could define the challenges. Ask the right question via business’s viewpoint. One point perhaps too often overlooked is that the CIO needs to be a part of a the executive team, for the role to be effective and as such the specific skills and areas of engagement will inevitably vary across organizations as these individuals fill the gaps left by other colleagues.
Be patient, but persistent; it takes the time to transform IT from an industrial silo mode to a hyperconnected and high-intelligent digital mode. Doing so demands quality time spent with sales/marketing, operations, finance leaders and even end customers. IT leadership also needs to shift from command-control to consultative style, leading by questioning. The CIO has to foresee, anticipate business needs for information and then prepare and gear up the information systems to not only make readily pertinent and quality information to top business decision makers but also preempt the need and present the quantitative business value accordingly.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Cross-industry sectors, IT organizations are shifting from a technology support center of a company into an information steward of business. Managing information and the information position of an organization is what ought to be called Information Management. Information Management means to have the right people get the right information to make the right decisions at the right time. And that information has the right quality (actual, right, complete,...) and quantity (the volume of data, etc) and the information is used properly. It is a strategic imperative for managing information effectively in driving digital transformation. Besides triple “I”s - Information, Innovation, and Integration, triple “A”s - Automation, Analysis, and Agility, triple “C”s - Change, Collaboration, and Cloudification, triple “P”s - Principle, Process, and Performance, triple “E”s Enablement, Exploration, and Effectiveness & Efficiency, triple “V”s - Vision, Value, and Variety, triple “F”s - Fast, Flow, and Flexibility; triple "T" factors - Transformation, Transparency, and Talent Management; triple “S” factors: Strategy, Speed, and Simplicity; triple “D” factors - Data, DevOp, and Design, here we introduce three “Q” factors in running a high-mature digital IT:
Quality: The "people, process, technology" must be defined and maintained to support the quality goal of IT organization. The focus is necessary to maintain or improve quality because there can be positive impacts as well as negative needs to be on organizational capabilities with technology as a key ingredient. The right people -those who share the business objective and have the requisite skills to deliver it, using processes that are valid and evolving can adapt and adopt technology that maintains and expands capabilities that support strategies and priorities in accordance with the corporate culture. From PM perspective, the big Q - Quality is a function of scope, budget, and resources.This is why Agile approach involves users early in a process of creation the "things," and uses them continuously to "assure quality." From data management perspective, by “quality data” – it means clean, organized, actionable data from which to extract relevant information and insight. Data quality does not end with managing the incorrect entry of information, but the logic of data has to be taken into account too. From talent management perspective, high-quality leader or employees are great in attitude, aptitude, and altitude -a winning mixture composed of character, intelligence and competence in a humble frame of self-esteem which makes aware of his/her quality without needing to show them. They must be anchored to a full professionalism; also made of personal qualities such as, independent judgment, critical thinking, professionalism and sense of responsibility and balance through which it becomes possible to earn the role of trust and guiding the organization in which they work, the respect and trust of others. and become a value constructor. These are the multidimensional understanding of quality in running a digital IT.
Quantity: As Drucker wisely put: you can only manage what you measure. The quantitative measurement helps management continue improving IT efficiency. The senior leadership team should ask every department how much the IT service is worth to them. Each department will need to measure that in a way appropriate to their business function. The things that can be measured from within the IT function are all surrogates for real performance indicators. Measuring them and improving their scores will probably improve the actual performance of the IT function, such as IT Savings (IT work which positively impacts the bottom line); IT expense as a percentage of sales. IT spend per employee. IT employees as a percentage of total employees. Uptime % for business critical systems. Customer service % of positive responses. Utilization of key IT managed resources. Total Cost of IT ) includes all costs associated with building, running and operating the IT environment and includes workforce costs, license costs, hardware costs, software costs, systems costs, outsourcing costs, a portion of HR costs, etc. (In other words, more than just the IT budget). IT ROI Ratio = (Net Operating Revenue – (Total Expenses – TCIT))/TCIT. Return on IT Investment = Net Operating Profit / TCIT.
Questioning: Modern CIOs lead by questioning, asking the right questions is both the art and science. The CIO role is a challenging perch to sit on. Whilst they need to ensure their IT department keeps the lights on, continually improves, provide the IT enablement to allow the business to grow. Effective IT leaders navigate their leadership through continuous asking: “Who, Who not, Where, Where not, What, What not, When, When not, Why, Why not, How, and How not” Ask the right questions for ensuring doing the right things before doing things right. Ask the right question by using business vocabulary if possible. Too often, when asking questions, you tend to assume that the people who are answering actually understand your language. Many times, that is not the case and leads to a misalignment between "what you need" vs. "what you get."An effective leader not only asks a deep “WHY” - to diagnose the root cause of problems but also asks the positive “Why NOT?" -The refusal to be bound by constraints and limitations and a pursuit of possibilities rather than impossibilities seems to be a hallmark of great leadership achievements. A true leader has vision and insight to ask “What If & How about.” A truly great leader would ask “What if we do things in a new way” or 'How can I make things better for the whole?'. The one with insight sees what everyone would want to see, if only you had his/her eyes. A good leader asks the questions anyone would want to ask, if only you had his/her perspective. A great leader provides the vision to achieve the results that all would want to go if you could define the challenges. Ask the right question via business’s viewpoint. One point perhaps too often overlooked is that the CIO needs to be a part of a the executive team, for the role to be effective and as such the specific skills and areas of engagement will inevitably vary across organizations as these individuals fill the gaps left by other colleagues.
Be patient, but persistent; it takes the time to transform IT from an industrial silo mode to a hyperconnected and high-intelligent digital mode. Doing so demands quality time spent with sales/marketing, operations, finance leaders and even end customers. IT leadership also needs to shift from command-control to consultative style, leading by questioning. The CIO has to foresee, anticipate business needs for information and then prepare and gear up the information systems to not only make readily pertinent and quality information to top business decision makers but also preempt the need and present the quantitative business value accordingly.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
What’s the Weakest Link in Strategy Execution
PEOPLE is always one of the weakest links in strategy execution.
A good strategy is beyond the well-designed template filled out with goal and vision, it should be more subject to challenges we face and provides an approach to overcome them, it’s executable. However, Complexity, uncertainty, disruptive changes, and interdependence are the new normal facing business today, more than two-thirds of strategy implementation fail to achieve the expected result. What’s the weakest link in strategy execution? And how to improve the effectiveness of strategy implementation?
Leadership: Clear communication and "walk the talk" are absolutely important. Leading by example, support from the senior leadership and coaching is extremely crucial to effective strategy implementation. It is important to make sure that the strategy has been communicated broadly and well understood by everyone. The good strategy will break an executive team out of tunneled vision, and transform into a creative, entrepreneurial, and strategic perspective. It is perhaps helpful to blend of two different methodologies -storytelling and visual maps to facilitate the communication process: The visual map gives people the whole business situation and the storytelling conducted by leaders provide the meaning of transformation. It often happens where the organization defines and communicates a certain strategy, but as soon as they come across the first conflict, their decisions contradict the communicated strategy. Therefore, with the support of senior leadership, iteration, interaction, and cross-functional understanding are all crucial in enforcing communication.
Process: Another interesting link to explore is the driver for identifying key strategic processes. It is usually the parameters that affect strategy execution the most which are key. In essence -strategy implementation is fundamental to how processes should be managed. This is an important issue to understand that the processes in your business will deliver/create the business result. Many times you don't consider the processes as the main driver to deliver the desired result, and then you will not get the result you hoped for. The processes are the tool to get the result you formulate in the strategy. Methodologically, a more adaptive strategy-development process places a premium on effective communications from all the executives participating. Also, convert these initiatives into an operating reality by formally integrating the strategic-management process with financial planning processes, governance processes or other key business processes, and create a rigorous, ongoing management process for formulating the specific strategic initiatives.
Technology: Many companies miss the strategy for how they use technology to manage the business of the business vs. just managing the business. Is the business model scaling the right way to achieve the strategic objectives? Are there things that can be done to direct more cash towards development activity, besides just re-allocating budgets and cutting headcount. Most companies are lacking a holistic strategy for how they use technology to drive their business, and it's the information management strategy that most often goes unmanaged. Nowadays, there is great value in collaborative technologies that allow for more democratic decision-making and increased collaboration and information sharing across functional departments. Digital technologies can also be very helpful in strategic analysis. Information Strategy must be updated from time to time based on the current business requirements. Or if any advanced technology is driving the business, then it happens on the other way round. IT is often driving the business, depends on the industry, as well as a benchmark in the similar industry.
PEOPLE is always one of the weakest links in strategy execution. The business strategy execution gaps exist at the people’s mindsets, the organizational culture, Lack of risk tolerance culture is also a barrier to implementing strategy more aggressively. You should reward ‘intelligent’ failure; mistakes are allowed, but you want people to start from a specific set of tested assumptions, rather than just shooting from the hip, learn from mistakes and adapt. You should promote and encourage drivers, that small group of intrapreneurs in your organization who are able to take an idea and passionately fight for it because innovation management is always a significant part of strategy management.
Governance: General speaking, four key dimensions of corporate governance are accountability, strategy, policy and monitoring - understand accountabilities of environment - regulatory, shareholder, etc; the logical scenario is to develop business strategy, also develop business policies offering further constraint or guidance to implementation of strategy, and then monitor performance and implementation of strategy, as well as manage risks across all domains of interest. Thus, governance complements strategy management, and strategic planning is also one out of a high number of activities within an enterprise that is part of one or more corporate governance structures as well.
Strategy management is one of the most important business activities in organizations today. It is a cohesive entity of programs, projects, and policies that concentrate and fuse corporate resources to enable an organization to establish, sustain, and enhance its competitiveness and capabilities for self-renewal. It's about creating tomorrow's organization out of today. Therefore, it is critical to identify and strengthen the weakest link and determines how each part of the organization, including all of the key functions must "put it all together" to be successful in implementing strategy and bring tangible business results and reach the business vision ultimately.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
A good strategy is beyond the well-designed template filled out with goal and vision, it should be more subject to challenges we face and provides an approach to overcome them, it’s executable. However, Complexity, uncertainty, disruptive changes, and interdependence are the new normal facing business today, more than two-thirds of strategy implementation fail to achieve the expected result. What’s the weakest link in strategy execution? And how to improve the effectiveness of strategy implementation?
Leadership: Clear communication and "walk the talk" are absolutely important. Leading by example, support from the senior leadership and coaching is extremely crucial to effective strategy implementation. It is important to make sure that the strategy has been communicated broadly and well understood by everyone. The good strategy will break an executive team out of tunneled vision, and transform into a creative, entrepreneurial, and strategic perspective. It is perhaps helpful to blend of two different methodologies -storytelling and visual maps to facilitate the communication process: The visual map gives people the whole business situation and the storytelling conducted by leaders provide the meaning of transformation. It often happens where the organization defines and communicates a certain strategy, but as soon as they come across the first conflict, their decisions contradict the communicated strategy. Therefore, with the support of senior leadership, iteration, interaction, and cross-functional understanding are all crucial in enforcing communication.
Process: Another interesting link to explore is the driver for identifying key strategic processes. It is usually the parameters that affect strategy execution the most which are key. In essence -strategy implementation is fundamental to how processes should be managed. This is an important issue to understand that the processes in your business will deliver/create the business result. Many times you don't consider the processes as the main driver to deliver the desired result, and then you will not get the result you hoped for. The processes are the tool to get the result you formulate in the strategy. Methodologically, a more adaptive strategy-development process places a premium on effective communications from all the executives participating. Also, convert these initiatives into an operating reality by formally integrating the strategic-management process with financial planning processes, governance processes or other key business processes, and create a rigorous, ongoing management process for formulating the specific strategic initiatives.
Technology: Many companies miss the strategy for how they use technology to manage the business of the business vs. just managing the business. Is the business model scaling the right way to achieve the strategic objectives? Are there things that can be done to direct more cash towards development activity, besides just re-allocating budgets and cutting headcount. Most companies are lacking a holistic strategy for how they use technology to drive their business, and it's the information management strategy that most often goes unmanaged. Nowadays, there is great value in collaborative technologies that allow for more democratic decision-making and increased collaboration and information sharing across functional departments. Digital technologies can also be very helpful in strategic analysis. Information Strategy must be updated from time to time based on the current business requirements. Or if any advanced technology is driving the business, then it happens on the other way round. IT is often driving the business, depends on the industry, as well as a benchmark in the similar industry.
PEOPLE is always one of the weakest links in strategy execution. The business strategy execution gaps exist at the people’s mindsets, the organizational culture, Lack of risk tolerance culture is also a barrier to implementing strategy more aggressively. You should reward ‘intelligent’ failure; mistakes are allowed, but you want people to start from a specific set of tested assumptions, rather than just shooting from the hip, learn from mistakes and adapt. You should promote and encourage drivers, that small group of intrapreneurs in your organization who are able to take an idea and passionately fight for it because innovation management is always a significant part of strategy management.
Governance: General speaking, four key dimensions of corporate governance are accountability, strategy, policy and monitoring - understand accountabilities of environment - regulatory, shareholder, etc; the logical scenario is to develop business strategy, also develop business policies offering further constraint or guidance to implementation of strategy, and then monitor performance and implementation of strategy, as well as manage risks across all domains of interest. Thus, governance complements strategy management, and strategic planning is also one out of a high number of activities within an enterprise that is part of one or more corporate governance structures as well.
Strategy management is one of the most important business activities in organizations today. It is a cohesive entity of programs, projects, and policies that concentrate and fuse corporate resources to enable an organization to establish, sustain, and enhance its competitiveness and capabilities for self-renewal. It's about creating tomorrow's organization out of today. Therefore, it is critical to identify and strengthen the weakest link and determines how each part of the organization, including all of the key functions must "put it all together" to be successful in implementing strategy and bring tangible business results and reach the business vision ultimately.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
November 19, 2015
The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 11/19/2015
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 management, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight of the “Future of CIO” blog.
The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” Blog 11/19/2015 The Characteristics to Build Great Leadership: Leadership is about future, future implicates changes and innovation. Leadership is Influence. The leader’s influence is based on the courage to inspire, confidence to assert, wisdom to negotiate, and uniqueness to bridge. More specifically, what are the important characteristics to build great leadership?
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 with or even stifle innovation and leads ultimately to company failure? Innovation governance, how to get it right?
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's 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 Aspects of Business Transformation: Transformation is a leapfrogging change when the final result is not fully defined at the beginning of it and with the expectation to reach the next level of progression. The most difficult topic during transformation is managing uncertainty especially when you change many things: processes, culture, systems and organization at the whole in the same time. It is a complicated moment for all people in the organization at all levels and at the same time, the business has to operate as usual. If you do not get the organization trained and prepared before, the transformation probability of success decreases fast.
The CIOs’ Digital Agenda: How to Run a High-Effective IT: 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 and acts as a custodian of technology systems, so how should CIOs prepare for the digital disruption and speed up accordingly? 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
How to Measure the Agility of an Organization
Focused on the degree of measurement to which an organization encourages an agile mindset.
Agility is important, organizations even have to become agiler than needed at the moment, because changes come faster and faster. But how do you measure the agility of an organization? What indicators do you need to consider that would help you with in-depth understanding where you are and where you are going to? What are the contributing factors that make you want to seek a measure of agility individually? And how would you interpret your agility score? Does 80% agility mean the organization responds to changes 80% of the time, deliver features to market 80% of the time etc? Usually, it doesn't. What other improvement programs are in effect at the organization that makes you want to single out the agile wins apart from others? Why do you feel this matters?
Agile values and principles are the best measures by themselves.Values and Principles are about what we believe and how we think. Neither of these is really amenable to direct measurement. And you will always have to tie these together to get the big picture of your organizational agility. Early and continuous delivery of working software can't be achieved without delivering working software and welcoming changing requirements even late. To get these principles right, highly motivated team and continuous attention to technical excellence are essential. And for this, teams should reflect at regular intervals to bring in continuous improvement. So when you connect the values and principles, that itself is a measure by itself and ultimately the real measure is working software. Agility can be achieved by understanding organizational needs by developing products fit for the purpose having both utility and warranty using resources effectively. However, this is often where organizations have difficulty juggling to keep everything in order. How quickly and how well do you respond to the market?" - "How valuable is the work you do?" - "How do our customers accept the features?", all of which are at best indirectly related to agility.
Focused on the degree to which an organization encourages an agile mindset - so the pertinent question to answer is "How agile are we?" Given that agility is largely about human relationships based on Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles, then it should be practical to prepare and administer a relevant questionnaire. Moreover, other Agile values and principles such as culture need to be measured as well. Culture is the number one barrier to an Agile transformation. So, measuring it although tough, is rather crucial and necessary. For example, some Agile organizations support and encourage the idea of highlighting "mistakes" by those who made them and actually in some ways rewarding those team members. This in turn reduces risks and promotes feedback, learning, and transparency.
It is practical to measure, whether you are getting what you want to get out of being agile. In agile, measure directly what you want to achieve, what your organizational goals are like go to the market time, cycle time to develop a feature, anything that you truly want to see results from. Some of the key measures of Agile effectiveness are Creating Value, Timely delivery, Teamwork and Productivity for the work done. By benchmark and comparison within the organization groups and their characteristics over a period of time may be the way to go. Organizational characteristics such as trust, collective engagement, teamwork, adaptability, integration, etc. do not directly tell you how much the defect rate has gone down, or what is the change in ROI. However, many organizations still want to measure organizational agility somehow by indicators that help you instigate agile values and principles.
The improvement of organization agility enhance the value of teams: Learning or improving agile practices does not enhance the value of the product. It enhances the value of the team creating the product. From a customer perspective, that's a world of a difference. For a transformation model, organizations would also need leadership, structure, people, etc. that would give you the mapping to those values and principles. And, then, wouldn't you want to ask, for example, how much has leadership grasped on the Agile mindset? What strategy/steps... should they take in order to improve Communication and Collaboration.
The great effect of organization visibility and motivation will be multiplied and magnified by the continuous training people get. The better people are trained, the greater the results will be. Organization visibility can be measured by the technology and procedures a company uses to collect, use, and display information. Team/People motivation can be measured by the incentives and authority people are given to make decisions and act to timely achieve organization objectives. People training builds skills for using visibility, for making right decisions, and acting effectively to achieve objectives. So training should be measured as well.
One way is to measure the outcome or delivered business value. First organizations need to transform into an agile mindset which leads to Agile behaviors, and such as much as you can measure behavior then attempts to do so may provide you with some type of metric that provides insight into the desired outcome when moving to Agile. In this endeavor, you would want to inject certain Agile principles in some systematic way. Let's step out of an organization already being Agile, and think of one that wants to move into that direction. You would want to create a cohesive agile culture, etc. However, you want to do this in a way that you can inspect and assess where you are at a given point of transformation. The improvements for a better outcome may take time. It is still important to know whether the practices are effective and measurable.
Agility is the ability to respond to changes, to change direction. It is not a goal in itself but needed for navigating impediments and moving targets. In a nutshell, we need an agile set of assessment criteria that based on the ecosystem of the organization which would give us a feel of where we are. Agility doesn't happen overnight. Work out what you want, and measure whether you're getting it. If you can get enough of what you want, in a changing environment, then you are as agile as you need to be in that environment.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Agility is important, organizations even have to become agiler than needed at the moment, because changes come faster and faster. But how do you measure the agility of an organization? What indicators do you need to consider that would help you with in-depth understanding where you are and where you are going to? What are the contributing factors that make you want to seek a measure of agility individually? And how would you interpret your agility score? Does 80% agility mean the organization responds to changes 80% of the time, deliver features to market 80% of the time etc? Usually, it doesn't. What other improvement programs are in effect at the organization that makes you want to single out the agile wins apart from others? Why do you feel this matters?
Agile values and principles are the best measures by themselves.Values and Principles are about what we believe and how we think. Neither of these is really amenable to direct measurement. And you will always have to tie these together to get the big picture of your organizational agility. Early and continuous delivery of working software can't be achieved without delivering working software and welcoming changing requirements even late. To get these principles right, highly motivated team and continuous attention to technical excellence are essential. And for this, teams should reflect at regular intervals to bring in continuous improvement. So when you connect the values and principles, that itself is a measure by itself and ultimately the real measure is working software. Agility can be achieved by understanding organizational needs by developing products fit for the purpose having both utility and warranty using resources effectively. However, this is often where organizations have difficulty juggling to keep everything in order. How quickly and how well do you respond to the market?" - "How valuable is the work you do?" - "How do our customers accept the features?", all of which are at best indirectly related to agility.
Focused on the degree to which an organization encourages an agile mindset - so the pertinent question to answer is "How agile are we?" Given that agility is largely about human relationships based on Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles, then it should be practical to prepare and administer a relevant questionnaire. Moreover, other Agile values and principles such as culture need to be measured as well. Culture is the number one barrier to an Agile transformation. So, measuring it although tough, is rather crucial and necessary. For example, some Agile organizations support and encourage the idea of highlighting "mistakes" by those who made them and actually in some ways rewarding those team members. This in turn reduces risks and promotes feedback, learning, and transparency.
It is practical to measure, whether you are getting what you want to get out of being agile. In agile, measure directly what you want to achieve, what your organizational goals are like go to the market time, cycle time to develop a feature, anything that you truly want to see results from. Some of the key measures of Agile effectiveness are Creating Value, Timely delivery, Teamwork and Productivity for the work done. By benchmark and comparison within the organization groups and their characteristics over a period of time may be the way to go. Organizational characteristics such as trust, collective engagement, teamwork, adaptability, integration, etc. do not directly tell you how much the defect rate has gone down, or what is the change in ROI. However, many organizations still want to measure organizational agility somehow by indicators that help you instigate agile values and principles.
The improvement of organization agility enhance the value of teams: Learning or improving agile practices does not enhance the value of the product. It enhances the value of the team creating the product. From a customer perspective, that's a world of a difference. For a transformation model, organizations would also need leadership, structure, people, etc. that would give you the mapping to those values and principles. And, then, wouldn't you want to ask, for example, how much has leadership grasped on the Agile mindset? What strategy/steps... should they take in order to improve Communication and Collaboration.
The great effect of organization visibility and motivation will be multiplied and magnified by the continuous training people get. The better people are trained, the greater the results will be. Organization visibility can be measured by the technology and procedures a company uses to collect, use, and display information. Team/People motivation can be measured by the incentives and authority people are given to make decisions and act to timely achieve organization objectives. People training builds skills for using visibility, for making right decisions, and acting effectively to achieve objectives. So training should be measured as well.
One way is to measure the outcome or delivered business value. First organizations need to transform into an agile mindset which leads to Agile behaviors, and such as much as you can measure behavior then attempts to do so may provide you with some type of metric that provides insight into the desired outcome when moving to Agile. In this endeavor, you would want to inject certain Agile principles in some systematic way. Let's step out of an organization already being Agile, and think of one that wants to move into that direction. You would want to create a cohesive agile culture, etc. However, you want to do this in a way that you can inspect and assess where you are at a given point of transformation. The improvements for a better outcome may take time. It is still important to know whether the practices are effective and measurable.Agility is the ability to respond to changes, to change direction. It is not a goal in itself but needed for navigating impediments and moving targets. In a nutshell, we need an agile set of assessment criteria that based on the ecosystem of the organization which would give us a feel of where we are. Agility doesn't happen overnight. Work out what you want, and measure whether you're getting it. If you can get enough of what you want, in a changing environment, then you are as agile as you need to be in that environment.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
November 18, 2015
Does Building a Digital Culture Need a Strategy
In reality polarities or paradoxes embedded in cultures are not necessarily problems, they need to be managed, but cannot be solved.
Culture is perhaps the most invisible, but powerful fabric surrounding the organization. It is the collective mindset, attitude, and behaviors. Leaders, believing in the effects and high value of a company culture, need a lot of resilience, resistance to critics though reflecting and maybe adjusting themselves to follow their roadmap continuously in building a strong culture. So does creating a culture itself need an internal strategy? Does it start with "What are we staying for?", "How to address it right?" "Who is in my team to do so?", "What are the milestones of implementation?", "What will be better when we did it?” And “what are in-depth understanding about the culture at the first step?”
Culture is analogous to the foundation of a building - you can architect and construct the best building in the world, but doing so on a shaky foundation is a waste of time. There are times an organization's culture won't effectively support what it needs to do to be successful, in which case the best strategy is to first fix the culture and/or create the desired culture. This is hardly a simple or easy fix, but it is often the right one. Those responsible need to wake up, look around and start fixing the problem - which often means first fixing themselves, shift the mindset and bring the wisdom the workplace.
Culture is the real, underlying heart of an organization -regardless of what may be publicly stated in a mission statement or the like. When an organization determines its strategy and puts it forward in action, the organization is stating its true culture, the heart underneath the surface. It is impossible not to, much like it is impossible for an individual to maintain any behavior long-term that is in opposition to their paradigm. So, it is true that culture is more important than strategy. And maintaining cultural coherence across a company's portfolio should be an essential factor when determining a corporate strategy.
Culture is more powerful than strategy -If the strategy is at odds with the culture then there is no real contest. But that does not mean culture will regularly 'eat' the strategy. It’s important to recognize that some of what are often considered problems to be solved are in reality polarities or paradoxes to be managed. These cannot be solved, but must be managed as interdependent opposites. A lot of wasted time and effort can go into attempts to solve organizational polarities (whether strategy, structure, tactics, or culture). Examples can be things like stability and change, centralization and decentralization, individual and group, quality and cost. The balance between, values, and strategy must be part of every organization with the genesis of positive emotions (which is the catalyst to changing culture) flowing from the executive leadership team. Putting emphasis on creating a healthy organizational culture to separate mediocre organizations from flourishing and sustainable enterprises.
Culture takes all forms - some 'out of control cliques' and some 'microcosms of diversity.' Culture is critically important to a business's success so it is appropriate for business leaders to be a bit obsessed with it. And sometimes in businesses, what is taken for a problem in culture is really something situational. In those cases, the culture doesn't need to change per se but that situation does. The best companies do more than mirror the world. They utilize that mirror to reflect the skills and talents of all of their employees. Business leaders who recognize they have a problem with their culture want to change for the better, to benefit all concerned. Don't let those underground bad apples spoil the whole company culture that a founder or executive team worked very hard to build for the benefit of their customers. It's whatever the leadership encouraged, excused, or condoned shapes what culture turns to be, so they brought it upon themselves. In high-integrity cultures, every person has the opportunity to exhibit leadership by upholding the company core values and advocating the culture of innovation.
The strategy is what you envisioned would happen, culture is what reality sends back in return. It is feedback for fine tuning, it is the master of proofreading, the final test all your thought process will experience, it is the teacher that will show you what you can do more and lecture you on how you can still do better and be better, it is the gravity that holds your dreams to the ground. It is very true that cultures can change and, in fact, are evolving all the time. The key thing to remember is that they evolve from the top and the line executives with regard to how they actually manage the business utilizing the values and attributes that are noted in the company culture statement. If the actual management values and attributes are not utilized in practice in comparison to those listed in the written culture statement, all employees will know that it is a falsehood.
The spirit of an organization comes from the top. The mindset and actions of the leaders define the culture. It is what they do AND what they do not do.That only changes the culture if coworkers, management, and leadership ALLOW those actions to define the company. You will always have people making mistakes or bad decisions, but it's how you handle those situations that determine if those actions are now part of the culture or just an anomaly. It is true that the management team can say one thing that seems appropriate, then in practice, are very biased and narrow-minded, not at all in keeping with respect, fairness, or honesty. Typically, management teams will really use the Company Core Values as a guiding parameter on anything they do. Every action changes a culture - no matter what level you hold. Leaders set the tone, but they aren't the only ones who set the culture. In fact, when leaders think the culture is one thing, but those at lower levels have a different experience it can create even more issues. Everyone in an organization 'owns' the culture with their part in it.
Culture building and change are a transformational shift, it needs a strategy, a good one - First, diagnose the real problems, and then set guidelines to change it. No doubt that culture change is more complicated than any other types of changes such as software update or an organizational restructure. Culture change is a slow and complicated process. But it’s worth the effort if it can boost your strategy implementation and lift up your organizational maturity.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Culture is perhaps the most invisible, but powerful fabric surrounding the organization. It is the collective mindset, attitude, and behaviors. Leaders, believing in the effects and high value of a company culture, need a lot of resilience, resistance to critics though reflecting and maybe adjusting themselves to follow their roadmap continuously in building a strong culture. So does creating a culture itself need an internal strategy? Does it start with "What are we staying for?", "How to address it right?" "Who is in my team to do so?", "What are the milestones of implementation?", "What will be better when we did it?” And “what are in-depth understanding about the culture at the first step?”
Culture is analogous to the foundation of a building - you can architect and construct the best building in the world, but doing so on a shaky foundation is a waste of time. There are times an organization's culture won't effectively support what it needs to do to be successful, in which case the best strategy is to first fix the culture and/or create the desired culture. This is hardly a simple or easy fix, but it is often the right one. Those responsible need to wake up, look around and start fixing the problem - which often means first fixing themselves, shift the mindset and bring the wisdom the workplace.
Culture is the real, underlying heart of an organization -regardless of what may be publicly stated in a mission statement or the like. When an organization determines its strategy and puts it forward in action, the organization is stating its true culture, the heart underneath the surface. It is impossible not to, much like it is impossible for an individual to maintain any behavior long-term that is in opposition to their paradigm. So, it is true that culture is more important than strategy. And maintaining cultural coherence across a company's portfolio should be an essential factor when determining a corporate strategy.
Culture is more powerful than strategy -If the strategy is at odds with the culture then there is no real contest. But that does not mean culture will regularly 'eat' the strategy. It’s important to recognize that some of what are often considered problems to be solved are in reality polarities or paradoxes to be managed. These cannot be solved, but must be managed as interdependent opposites. A lot of wasted time and effort can go into attempts to solve organizational polarities (whether strategy, structure, tactics, or culture). Examples can be things like stability and change, centralization and decentralization, individual and group, quality and cost. The balance between, values, and strategy must be part of every organization with the genesis of positive emotions (which is the catalyst to changing culture) flowing from the executive leadership team. Putting emphasis on creating a healthy organizational culture to separate mediocre organizations from flourishing and sustainable enterprises.
Culture takes all forms - some 'out of control cliques' and some 'microcosms of diversity.' Culture is critically important to a business's success so it is appropriate for business leaders to be a bit obsessed with it. And sometimes in businesses, what is taken for a problem in culture is really something situational. In those cases, the culture doesn't need to change per se but that situation does. The best companies do more than mirror the world. They utilize that mirror to reflect the skills and talents of all of their employees. Business leaders who recognize they have a problem with their culture want to change for the better, to benefit all concerned. Don't let those underground bad apples spoil the whole company culture that a founder or executive team worked very hard to build for the benefit of their customers. It's whatever the leadership encouraged, excused, or condoned shapes what culture turns to be, so they brought it upon themselves. In high-integrity cultures, every person has the opportunity to exhibit leadership by upholding the company core values and advocating the culture of innovation.
The strategy is what you envisioned would happen, culture is what reality sends back in return. It is feedback for fine tuning, it is the master of proofreading, the final test all your thought process will experience, it is the teacher that will show you what you can do more and lecture you on how you can still do better and be better, it is the gravity that holds your dreams to the ground. It is very true that cultures can change and, in fact, are evolving all the time. The key thing to remember is that they evolve from the top and the line executives with regard to how they actually manage the business utilizing the values and attributes that are noted in the company culture statement. If the actual management values and attributes are not utilized in practice in comparison to those listed in the written culture statement, all employees will know that it is a falsehood.
The spirit of an organization comes from the top. The mindset and actions of the leaders define the culture. It is what they do AND what they do not do.That only changes the culture if coworkers, management, and leadership ALLOW those actions to define the company. You will always have people making mistakes or bad decisions, but it's how you handle those situations that determine if those actions are now part of the culture or just an anomaly. It is true that the management team can say one thing that seems appropriate, then in practice, are very biased and narrow-minded, not at all in keeping with respect, fairness, or honesty. Typically, management teams will really use the Company Core Values as a guiding parameter on anything they do. Every action changes a culture - no matter what level you hold. Leaders set the tone, but they aren't the only ones who set the culture. In fact, when leaders think the culture is one thing, but those at lower levels have a different experience it can create even more issues. Everyone in an organization 'owns' the culture with their part in it.Culture building and change are a transformational shift, it needs a strategy, a good one - First, diagnose the real problems, and then set guidelines to change it. No doubt that culture change is more complicated than any other types of changes such as software update or an organizational restructure. Culture change is a slow and complicated process. But it’s worth the effort if it can boost your strategy implementation and lift up your organizational maturity.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Does Building a Culture Need a Strategy
In reality polarities or paradoxes embedded in cultures are not necessarily problems, they need to be managed, but cannot be solved.
Culture is perhaps the most invisible, but powerful fabric surrounding the organization. It is the collective mindset, attitude, and behaviors. Leaders, believing in the effects and high value of a company culture, need a lot of resilience, resistance to critics though reflecting and maybe adjusting themselves to follow their roadmap continuously in building a strong culture. So does creating a culture itself need an internal strategy? Does it start with "What are we staying for?", "How to address it right?" "Who is in my team to do so?", "What are the milestones of implementation?", "What will be better when we did it?” And “what are in-depth understanding about the culture at the first step?”
Culture is analogous to the foundation of a building - you can architect and construct the best building in the world, but doing so on a shaky foundation is a waste of time. There are times an organization's culture won't effectively support what it needs to do to be successful, in which case the best strategy is to first fix the culture and/or create the desired culture. This is hardly a simple or easy fix, but it is often the right one. Those responsible need to wake up, look around and start fixing the problem - which often means first fixing themselves, shift the mindset and bring the wisdom the workplace.
Culture is the real, underlying heart of an organization -regardless of what may be publicly stated in a mission statement or the like. When an organization determines its strategy and puts it forward in action, the organization is stating its true culture, the heart underneath the surface. It is impossible not to, much like it is impossible for an individual to maintain any behavior long-term that is in opposition to their paradigm. So, it is true that culture is more important than strategy. And maintaining cultural coherence across a company's portfolio should be an essential factor when determining a corporate strategy.
Culture is more powerful than strategy -If the strategy is at odds with the culture then there is no real contest. But that does not mean culture will regularly 'eat' the strategy. It’s important to recognize that some of what are often considered problems to be solved are in reality polarities or paradoxes to be managed. These cannot be solved, but must be managed as interdependent opposites. A lot of wasted time and effort can go into attempts to solve organizational polarities (whether strategy, structure, tactics, or culture). Examples can be things like stability and change, centralization and decentralization, individual and group, quality and cost. The balance between, values, and strategy must be part of every organization with the genesis of positive emotions (which is the catalyst to changing culture) flowing from the executive leadership team. Putting emphasis on creating a healthy organizational culture to separate mediocre organizations from flourishing and sustainable enterprises.
Culture takes all forms - some 'out of control cliques' and some 'microcosms of diversity.' Culture is critically important to a business's success so it is appropriate for business leaders to be a bit obsessed with it. And sometimes in businesses, what is taken for a problem in culture is really something situational. In those cases, the culture doesn't need to change per se but that situation does. The best companies do more than mirror the world. They utilize that mirror to reflect the skills and talents of all of their employees. Business leaders who recognize they have a problem with their culture want to change for the better, to benefit all concerned. Don't let those underground bad apples spoil the whole company culture that a founder or executive team worked very hard to build for the benefit of their customers. It's whatever the leadership encouraged, excused, or condoned shapes what culture turns to be, so they brought it upon themselves. In high-integrity cultures, every person has the opportunity to exhibit leadership by upholding the company core values and advocating the culture of innovation.
The strategy is what you envisioned would happen, culture is what reality sends back in return. It is feedback for fine tuning, it is the master of proofreading, the final test all your thought process will experience, it is the teacher that will show you what you can do more and lecture you on how you can still do better and be better, it is the gravity that holds your dreams to the ground. It is very true that cultures can change and, in fact, are evolving all the time. The key thing to remember is that they evolve from the top and the line executives with regard to how they actually manage the business utilizing the values and attributes that are noted in the company culture statement. If the actual management values and attributes are not utilized in practice in comparison to those listed in the written culture statement, all employees will know that it is a falsehood.
The spirit of an organization comes from the top. The mindset and actions of the leaders define the culture. It is what they do AND what they do not do.That only changes the culture if coworkers, management, and leadership ALLOW those actions to define the company. You will always have people making mistakes or bad decisions, but it's how you handle those situations that determine if those actions are now part of the culture or just an anomaly. It is true that the management team can say one thing that seems appropriate, then in practice, are very biased and narrow-minded, not at all in keeping with respect, fairness, or honesty. Typically, management teams will really use the Company Core Values as a guiding parameter on anything they do. Every action changes a culture - no matter what level you hold. Leaders set the tone, but they aren't the only ones who set the culture. In fact, when leaders think the culture is one thing, but those at lower levels have a different experience it can create even more issues. Everyone in an organization 'owns' the culture with their part in it.
Culture building and change are a transformational shift, it needs a strategy, a good one - First, diagnose the real problems, and then set guidelines to change it. No doubt that culture change is more complicated than any other types of changes such as software update or an organizational restructure. Culture change is a slow and complicated process. But it’s worth the effort if it can boost your strategy implementation and lift up your organizational maturity.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Culture is perhaps the most invisible, but powerful fabric surrounding the organization. It is the collective mindset, attitude, and behaviors. Leaders, believing in the effects and high value of a company culture, need a lot of resilience, resistance to critics though reflecting and maybe adjusting themselves to follow their roadmap continuously in building a strong culture. So does creating a culture itself need an internal strategy? Does it start with "What are we staying for?", "How to address it right?" "Who is in my team to do so?", "What are the milestones of implementation?", "What will be better when we did it?” And “what are in-depth understanding about the culture at the first step?”
Culture is analogous to the foundation of a building - you can architect and construct the best building in the world, but doing so on a shaky foundation is a waste of time. There are times an organization's culture won't effectively support what it needs to do to be successful, in which case the best strategy is to first fix the culture and/or create the desired culture. This is hardly a simple or easy fix, but it is often the right one. Those responsible need to wake up, look around and start fixing the problem - which often means first fixing themselves, shift the mindset and bring the wisdom the workplace.
Culture is the real, underlying heart of an organization -regardless of what may be publicly stated in a mission statement or the like. When an organization determines its strategy and puts it forward in action, the organization is stating its true culture, the heart underneath the surface. It is impossible not to, much like it is impossible for an individual to maintain any behavior long-term that is in opposition to their paradigm. So, it is true that culture is more important than strategy. And maintaining cultural coherence across a company's portfolio should be an essential factor when determining a corporate strategy.
Culture is more powerful than strategy -If the strategy is at odds with the culture then there is no real contest. But that does not mean culture will regularly 'eat' the strategy. It’s important to recognize that some of what are often considered problems to be solved are in reality polarities or paradoxes to be managed. These cannot be solved, but must be managed as interdependent opposites. A lot of wasted time and effort can go into attempts to solve organizational polarities (whether strategy, structure, tactics, or culture). Examples can be things like stability and change, centralization and decentralization, individual and group, quality and cost. The balance between, values, and strategy must be part of every organization with the genesis of positive emotions (which is the catalyst to changing culture) flowing from the executive leadership team. Putting emphasis on creating a healthy organizational culture to separate mediocre organizations from flourishing and sustainable enterprises.
Culture takes all forms - some 'out of control cliques' and some 'microcosms of diversity.' Culture is critically important to a business's success so it is appropriate for business leaders to be a bit obsessed with it. And sometimes in businesses, what is taken for a problem in culture is really something situational. In those cases, the culture doesn't need to change per se but that situation does. The best companies do more than mirror the world. They utilize that mirror to reflect the skills and talents of all of their employees. Business leaders who recognize they have a problem with their culture want to change for the better, to benefit all concerned. Don't let those underground bad apples spoil the whole company culture that a founder or executive team worked very hard to build for the benefit of their customers. It's whatever the leadership encouraged, excused, or condoned shapes what culture turns to be, so they brought it upon themselves. In high-integrity cultures, every person has the opportunity to exhibit leadership by upholding the company core values and advocating the culture of innovation.
The strategy is what you envisioned would happen, culture is what reality sends back in return. It is feedback for fine tuning, it is the master of proofreading, the final test all your thought process will experience, it is the teacher that will show you what you can do more and lecture you on how you can still do better and be better, it is the gravity that holds your dreams to the ground. It is very true that cultures can change and, in fact, are evolving all the time. The key thing to remember is that they evolve from the top and the line executives with regard to how they actually manage the business utilizing the values and attributes that are noted in the company culture statement. If the actual management values and attributes are not utilized in practice in comparison to those listed in the written culture statement, all employees will know that it is a falsehood.
The spirit of an organization comes from the top. The mindset and actions of the leaders define the culture. It is what they do AND what they do not do.That only changes the culture if coworkers, management, and leadership ALLOW those actions to define the company. You will always have people making mistakes or bad decisions, but it's how you handle those situations that determine if those actions are now part of the culture or just an anomaly. It is true that the management team can say one thing that seems appropriate, then in practice, are very biased and narrow-minded, not at all in keeping with respect, fairness, or honesty. Typically, management teams will really use the Company Core Values as a guiding parameter on anything they do. Every action changes a culture - no matter what level you hold. Leaders set the tone, but they aren't the only ones who set the culture. In fact, when leaders think the culture is one thing, but those at lower levels have a different experience it can create even more issues. Everyone in an organization 'owns' the culture with their part in it.Culture building and change are a transformational shift, it needs a strategy, a good one - First, diagnose the real problems, and then set guidelines to change it. No doubt that culture change is more complicated than any other types of changes such as software update or an organizational restructure. Culture change is a slow and complicated process. But it’s worth the effort if it can boost your strategy implementation and lift up your organizational maturity.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
What are the CIO’s Top Priorities to Run a Digital IT
Reimagining IT via doing more with innovation, and branding IT via building the solid IT value proposition.
There is no doubt information is the lifeblood of business and IT plays a more critical role in any sector of organizations today. However, there is still a long way to go for IT to reach the next level of maturity, from reactive to proactive, from alignment to enablement, and from a cost center to a value creator. From IT management perspective, why don't more CIOs have a real seat at the big table? Why does the disconnect exist between the business and IT that fosters many of these concerns? And what are the CIO’s top priorities today to run a high-effective and high-innovative digital IT?
IT needs to contribute more to businesses’ top line growth: The bigger strategic question is what the function of IT in a company is - a value creator or a back-office cost center, revolves around which functions in a company are critical, for example, both sales and products in the business are absolutely critical. Without a product, you have nothing to sell, and without sales, you have no revenue. And then, the CIO should primarily be focused on the use of information and technology to increase sales and the use of information and technology to enhance or transform products/operations. A trend like the digital transformation is an amalgamation of exactly those principles, to leverage IT in building the set of differentiated business capabilities and accelerate businesses' long-term growth.
Cost optimization is still one of the top concerns for CIOs to keep bottom line stability: Keep the light on is always fundamental, and cost containment continues to proliferate. The amount of waste tied up in the business process these days is astounding. It’s important to having an optimized system that flows product, information and/or services to the end user/consumer as effectively as possible. So IT leaders need to make targeted time to review, examine, and adjust the processes and systems, to consolidate, integrate, modernize, cloudify, and optimize.
IT strategic planning and capability/process mapping: Running IT as a business enabler begins with understanding the true business needs. The business needs for IT are rooted in the business processes and where the IT services and systems touch these processes. However, most IT organizations have not mapped their IT services and systems, or the set of business capabilities to their business processes (although some organizations have done loose couplings). This is difficult "grunt" work. It is not flashy. It does not produce any immediate tangible results, so it runs counter to the short-term fiscal goals of many organizations. Yet, to best align mid and long-range strategic IT planning and budgeting with the business, this type of process-capability-strategy implementation mapping is highly useful.
Setting the priority right as every IT project is a business initiative: Business justification for the IT services is a joint responsibility. IT must lead building the justifications. If you leave it to the business, priorities will change with every shift in the wind. The business must be involved; this is where understanding the alignment between the business processes and IT services is so useful. Agility (sprints), time to market, technology demands, security are key for IT team. CIOs need to start to take a risk and more importantly, should start to claim ownership and accountability on projects. Partnerships are based on joined skin in the game and a win-win model.
Rebranding IT via building the solid IT value proposition: The CIO must be a business strategist to have the clear business vision and goals, of course, he/she has to be at the big table, because IT is at the unique position to oversight the business processes, and technology is the important ingredient in almost all critical business processes. However, in many organizations, IT is still perceived as slow, expensive, and not aligned with the business. Oftentimes the CIO is also regarded as the "computer guy," a glorified fixer/tinkerer/technologist, and many times CIOs have a technology background, many CIOs never work in the other business department. To rebrand IT, the CIO must be at a business level and doesn’t have to be involved in all technical issues. The CIO needs to educate the business to understand IT's value. Of course, the CIO can better show the value if he/she understands how the business uses the IT services to support the business processes. Only the customer (in IT's case, the business) can define what is of value. So how does a business view value? In general, anything that adds to the bottom line (increases revenue or decreases costs), increases market share, decreases risk, improves cycle time, or helps achieve some other business outcome is of value to the business.
Reimagining IT via doing more with innovation: There is only so much squeezing that can occur. The penny-pinching mentality will not win out at the end of the day. Enabling business, product, and engineering department should be deliverables for IT team. In order to 'align IT to the business,' it is necessary to rethink the very idea of 'supporting' the enterprise - and think instead of getting rid of as much IT support as possible. This is what liberates innovation. IT can lead in the design of products and services that actually create a return. But it won't happen with 'old thinking,' old thinking just leads to a burden of support for operations whereas the true potential is in liberating new products, services, and business models.
Talent retention and development: retaining employees, especially high-performing and high-potential employees is crucial. Today’s high performers help you keep the business running, and high potential has the growth mind to lift your organizations to the next level. Without a stellar staff, few CIO’s/senior IT leaders will be able to achieve much. The problem of IT skill gaps should be seen as an opportunity, especially as more and more organizations are seeing IT as an enabler and driver of generating revenues. It is important to hire really bright, energetic, positive people to build the culture of innovation, and it’s important to leverage the emergent digital pipelines and experiment the new way to do performance management, people management and culture management in a more cohesive way.
CIOs must also be rock solid leaders, get out of the office, back into the action and provide a clear vision that their staff can get excited about how to delight customers. An IT organization with high-maturity not only adapts to the changes but plays a pivotal role in driving digital transformation in their company.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
There is no doubt information is the lifeblood of business and IT plays a more critical role in any sector of organizations today. However, there is still a long way to go for IT to reach the next level of maturity, from reactive to proactive, from alignment to enablement, and from a cost center to a value creator. From IT management perspective, why don't more CIOs have a real seat at the big table? Why does the disconnect exist between the business and IT that fosters many of these concerns? And what are the CIO’s top priorities today to run a high-effective and high-innovative digital IT?
IT needs to contribute more to businesses’ top line growth: The bigger strategic question is what the function of IT in a company is - a value creator or a back-office cost center, revolves around which functions in a company are critical, for example, both sales and products in the business are absolutely critical. Without a product, you have nothing to sell, and without sales, you have no revenue. And then, the CIO should primarily be focused on the use of information and technology to increase sales and the use of information and technology to enhance or transform products/operations. A trend like the digital transformation is an amalgamation of exactly those principles, to leverage IT in building the set of differentiated business capabilities and accelerate businesses' long-term growth.
Cost optimization is still one of the top concerns for CIOs to keep bottom line stability: Keep the light on is always fundamental, and cost containment continues to proliferate. The amount of waste tied up in the business process these days is astounding. It’s important to having an optimized system that flows product, information and/or services to the end user/consumer as effectively as possible. So IT leaders need to make targeted time to review, examine, and adjust the processes and systems, to consolidate, integrate, modernize, cloudify, and optimize.
IT strategic planning and capability/process mapping: Running IT as a business enabler begins with understanding the true business needs. The business needs for IT are rooted in the business processes and where the IT services and systems touch these processes. However, most IT organizations have not mapped their IT services and systems, or the set of business capabilities to their business processes (although some organizations have done loose couplings). This is difficult "grunt" work. It is not flashy. It does not produce any immediate tangible results, so it runs counter to the short-term fiscal goals of many organizations. Yet, to best align mid and long-range strategic IT planning and budgeting with the business, this type of process-capability-strategy implementation mapping is highly useful.
Setting the priority right as every IT project is a business initiative: Business justification for the IT services is a joint responsibility. IT must lead building the justifications. If you leave it to the business, priorities will change with every shift in the wind. The business must be involved; this is where understanding the alignment between the business processes and IT services is so useful. Agility (sprints), time to market, technology demands, security are key for IT team. CIOs need to start to take a risk and more importantly, should start to claim ownership and accountability on projects. Partnerships are based on joined skin in the game and a win-win model.
Rebranding IT via building the solid IT value proposition: The CIO must be a business strategist to have the clear business vision and goals, of course, he/she has to be at the big table, because IT is at the unique position to oversight the business processes, and technology is the important ingredient in almost all critical business processes. However, in many organizations, IT is still perceived as slow, expensive, and not aligned with the business. Oftentimes the CIO is also regarded as the "computer guy," a glorified fixer/tinkerer/technologist, and many times CIOs have a technology background, many CIOs never work in the other business department. To rebrand IT, the CIO must be at a business level and doesn’t have to be involved in all technical issues. The CIO needs to educate the business to understand IT's value. Of course, the CIO can better show the value if he/she understands how the business uses the IT services to support the business processes. Only the customer (in IT's case, the business) can define what is of value. So how does a business view value? In general, anything that adds to the bottom line (increases revenue or decreases costs), increases market share, decreases risk, improves cycle time, or helps achieve some other business outcome is of value to the business.
Reimagining IT via doing more with innovation: There is only so much squeezing that can occur. The penny-pinching mentality will not win out at the end of the day. Enabling business, product, and engineering department should be deliverables for IT team. In order to 'align IT to the business,' it is necessary to rethink the very idea of 'supporting' the enterprise - and think instead of getting rid of as much IT support as possible. This is what liberates innovation. IT can lead in the design of products and services that actually create a return. But it won't happen with 'old thinking,' old thinking just leads to a burden of support for operations whereas the true potential is in liberating new products, services, and business models.
Talent retention and development: retaining employees, especially high-performing and high-potential employees is crucial. Today’s high performers help you keep the business running, and high potential has the growth mind to lift your organizations to the next level. Without a stellar staff, few CIO’s/senior IT leaders will be able to achieve much. The problem of IT skill gaps should be seen as an opportunity, especially as more and more organizations are seeing IT as an enabler and driver of generating revenues. It is important to hire really bright, energetic, positive people to build the culture of innovation, and it’s important to leverage the emergent digital pipelines and experiment the new way to do performance management, people management and culture management in a more cohesive way.CIOs must also be rock solid leaders, get out of the office, back into the action and provide a clear vision that their staff can get excited about how to delight customers. An IT organization with high-maturity not only adapts to the changes but plays a pivotal role in driving digital transformation in their company.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
November 17, 2015
Three “D”s in Digital IT
Digital IT needs to become a whole brain of the organization, to leverage left hemisphere's analytics strength and embrace the right hemisphere's intuition.
With the exponential flow of information and accelerating disruption of technology, IT plays a more significant role in the organization for driving long-term prosperity than ever. However, most of IT organizations get stuck at reactive mode as an order taker, running at a lower level of maturity. From leadership, structure, management perspective, how to improve IT agility, flexibility, and overall IT manageability? Besides triple “I”s - Information, Innovation, and Integration, triple “A”s - Automation, Analysis, and Agility, triple “C”s - Change, Collaboration, and Cloudification, triple “P”s - Principle, Process, and Performance, triple “E”s Enablement, Exploration, and Effectiveness & Efficiency, triple “V”s - Vision, Value, and Variety, triple “F”s - Fast, Flow, and Flexibility; triple "T" factors - Transformation, Transparency, and Talent Management; triple “S” factors: Strategy, Speed, and Simplicity, here we introduce three “D” factors in running a high-performing and high mature digital IT:
Data - Decision Management: IT is the foundation of data, information, and modern knowledge. The biggest misnomer regarding IT is that it is "just technology," the fact is that IT is the steward of business’s lifeblood- data, and a huge percentage of IT is about the identification and advancement of knowledge for the enterprise and its people. Data/information management is not for its own sake, but to ensure the right people have the right information at the right time to make the right decisions. Decision Management is still an emerging discipline. The whole purpose of analytics is to make better decisions based on data (big/small). Decisions are based on information and generate information. The amount of data required for a decision, and the amount of information generated by a decision, can both be measured in bits & bytes. IT must embrace a responsibility to engineer best practice of decision paths, “decisioneering" if you will. This demands a disciplined, process-based approach not only to data and information but also a deep understanding of the decisions that need to be made and their impact. A high-mature digital IT like the brain of its organization can process data and information to help the business make effective decisions both at the strategic level, tactical level, and operational level.
DevOps: It is the latest evolution of the Agile movement to bring even more stakeholders to the table by bridging silos, enforcing cross-functional collaboration and integration. DevOps is not just the engineering best practices, it is more as a people-centric management discipline. The human factor is absolutely key. The automation part of DevOps is the easy part. The confusing, debatable, easily-missed, can't-shrink-wrap-and-sell-it aspect of DevOps is Feedback/ Communication/Empathy. One without the other is not DevOps. Together they deliver velocity and productivity, which are the primary goals of DevOps. Velocity is what allows businesses to innovate in the delivery of services and products. DevOps is more of a soft skill, getting the teams to collaborate better. Technology is just the enabler.
Design: Digital IT will also focus more on customer delight, not just keep the light on, in order to build a customer-centric organization. UX/CX strategy is about "the big picture." You want your user experiences to support organizational strategy. You're not thinking of the "UX" that's only about wireframes and visual designs. You're thinking about brand, positioning, and environment, but from the standpoint of rigorous user understanding. The strategic objective of design thinking is to understand what your customers need and to help the business orient itself towards those needs in pursuit of its objectives. To do this you also have to understand the company's long-term goals and Identity (brand) and the Industry realities (competition), as well as the market (the reason for being). Develop a high-level design strategy that satisfies the requirements of different groups, also improve IT maturity from functioning to delight.
With these three “D” enforcement, IT is more like business’s whole brain to help businesses make effective decisions. At industrial age, IT is perhaps more like "left brain" only, rational, machine-like, and a bit isolated, it is easy to get disrupted by digitalization, while digital IT needs to become a whole brain, to embrace the right hemisphere's design thinking with color, creativity, and connectivity, to unleash the technology potential and capture the business's "Eureka Moment” –the growth or innovation opportunities, and to help build a more creative and productive working atmosphere for today’s digital workforce. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
With the exponential flow of information and accelerating disruption of technology, IT plays a more significant role in the organization for driving long-term prosperity than ever. However, most of IT organizations get stuck at reactive mode as an order taker, running at a lower level of maturity. From leadership, structure, management perspective, how to improve IT agility, flexibility, and overall IT manageability? Besides triple “I”s - Information, Innovation, and Integration, triple “A”s - Automation, Analysis, and Agility, triple “C”s - Change, Collaboration, and Cloudification, triple “P”s - Principle, Process, and Performance, triple “E”s Enablement, Exploration, and Effectiveness & Efficiency, triple “V”s - Vision, Value, and Variety, triple “F”s - Fast, Flow, and Flexibility; triple "T" factors - Transformation, Transparency, and Talent Management; triple “S” factors: Strategy, Speed, and Simplicity, here we introduce three “D” factors in running a high-performing and high mature digital IT:
Data - Decision Management: IT is the foundation of data, information, and modern knowledge. The biggest misnomer regarding IT is that it is "just technology," the fact is that IT is the steward of business’s lifeblood- data, and a huge percentage of IT is about the identification and advancement of knowledge for the enterprise and its people. Data/information management is not for its own sake, but to ensure the right people have the right information at the right time to make the right decisions. Decision Management is still an emerging discipline. The whole purpose of analytics is to make better decisions based on data (big/small). Decisions are based on information and generate information. The amount of data required for a decision, and the amount of information generated by a decision, can both be measured in bits & bytes. IT must embrace a responsibility to engineer best practice of decision paths, “decisioneering" if you will. This demands a disciplined, process-based approach not only to data and information but also a deep understanding of the decisions that need to be made and their impact. A high-mature digital IT like the brain of its organization can process data and information to help the business make effective decisions both at the strategic level, tactical level, and operational level.
DevOps: It is the latest evolution of the Agile movement to bring even more stakeholders to the table by bridging silos, enforcing cross-functional collaboration and integration. DevOps is not just the engineering best practices, it is more as a people-centric management discipline. The human factor is absolutely key. The automation part of DevOps is the easy part. The confusing, debatable, easily-missed, can't-shrink-wrap-and-sell-it aspect of DevOps is Feedback/ Communication/Empathy. One without the other is not DevOps. Together they deliver velocity and productivity, which are the primary goals of DevOps. Velocity is what allows businesses to innovate in the delivery of services and products. DevOps is more of a soft skill, getting the teams to collaborate better. Technology is just the enabler.
Design: Digital IT will also focus more on customer delight, not just keep the light on, in order to build a customer-centric organization. UX/CX strategy is about "the big picture." You want your user experiences to support organizational strategy. You're not thinking of the "UX" that's only about wireframes and visual designs. You're thinking about brand, positioning, and environment, but from the standpoint of rigorous user understanding. The strategic objective of design thinking is to understand what your customers need and to help the business orient itself towards those needs in pursuit of its objectives. To do this you also have to understand the company's long-term goals and Identity (brand) and the Industry realities (competition), as well as the market (the reason for being). Develop a high-level design strategy that satisfies the requirements of different groups, also improve IT maturity from functioning to delight.With these three “D” enforcement, IT is more like business’s whole brain to help businesses make effective decisions. At industrial age, IT is perhaps more like "left brain" only, rational, machine-like, and a bit isolated, it is easy to get disrupted by digitalization, while digital IT needs to become a whole brain, to embrace the right hemisphere's design thinking with color, creativity, and connectivity, to unleash the technology potential and capture the business's "Eureka Moment” –the growth or innovation opportunities, and to help build a more creative and productive working atmosphere for today’s digital workforce. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Profundity
A profound mind is like a big ocean, deep, but also open.
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:
Are you knowledgeable, insightful and understanding? Back to the root of the word “profundity,” it means insightful and understanding. Climbing Knowledge-Insight-Wisdom pyramid is important steps in gaining profundity. It’s not just about knowing, but in-depth understanding; it requires a person's ability to grasp or comprehend information, too often assumptions and prejudices get in the way of understanding. It is the responsibility of each individual to examine themselves and to make sure they are open to true understanding. Assumptions and prejudices are due to lack of deeper understanding. So far wisdom and knowledge have evolved in humans with their eyes and ears open to understand. Understanding has happened to human, which is a reflection of the intellect that has evolved. The opposite of profundity is superficiality: If you always categorize people via physical identification at skin level, you are not profound; if you only read the content without contextual intelligence, you are not profound; if you only capture the symptom, but not dig through the root cause, you are not profound. Knowledge is neutral and can be used for good and become beautiful -- or it can be used to harm others and becomes ugly. It is unfortunate when we become so narrow in our view that we have to put others down. This is not understanding, this is not knowledge, this is ego! Putting others down reflects superficial understanding and knowledge that has happened to the ego and neither deep understanding nor wisdom. Hopefully, knowledge and understanding lead us to the divine, beauty, truth and empathy.
Can you master multi-dimensional thinking processes? A profound mind is like a big ocean, deep, but also open. It can leverage multiple thinking processes in dealing with varying situations wisely. For example, critical thinking is the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion; Learning critical thinking is also about un-learning bad thinking habits and mistakes in reasoning. If you are referring to the ability to make judgments and to see the big picture, it is true that some people do this naturally. Critical thinking also has been described as "the process of purposeful, self-regulatory judgment, which uses reasoned consideration to evidence, context, conceptualizations, methods, and criteria." On the other side, creative thinking also plays an instrumental role in developing a greater understanding self, others, and the world, or in short, profundity. However, there are far too many who do not fully harness their creative ability when it comes down to defining and in some cases refining their own thought process. Ultimately, creative thinking requires a profound degree of intrapersonal independence and there are far too many people who stand as too intimidated and fearful of harnessing an independent platform in fear of not being good enough in the eyes of others. If we do not direct gradual strides toward its attainment, then we will never know what its substance can do for the potential of our livelihoods. Creativity also helps see problems in multiple dimensions and solve them with passion and innovation.
Do you bring the wisdom in the workplace? Wisdom in the workplace is to have positive mindsets and build an innovative culture. Often at traditional business settings, the noisy wheel gets greased, leadership is more about “loudness,” or fixing the symptom; and workers compete via the easiest, but the unprofessional way. Wisdom in the workplace means accountability to accept the responsibility for what you DO but also what you SAY -no rumor-mongering, no backbiting. Wisdom in the workplace means grooming and mentoring potential leaders now to close cognitive and skill gaps, to have the right people at the right position at the right time. Wisdom would necessarily be concerned with knowing what to say when to say, how to say, whom to say, where to say..as well as knowing what not to say, when not to say, how not to say, whom not to say, where not to say. Wisdom and humility go hand in hand. The more you know, the more you know you don’t know and admit unknown unknown. You become wise when you are humble enough to be aware of and admit what you don't know and share what you know. Wisdom= f(Applying what we think we know, Experience, Learning and unlearning, Sharing Knowledge and Experience).
A profound mind is deep, but not depressing; sophisticated, but not complicated; knowledgeable, but not arrogant; creative, but not naive; critical, but not negative; and mature, but not aged. With "VUCA" characteristics of digitalization, Talent Management will see the urgency of being innovative - to see your talent people via different angles.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
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:Are you knowledgeable, insightful and understanding? Back to the root of the word “profundity,” it means insightful and understanding. Climbing Knowledge-Insight-Wisdom pyramid is important steps in gaining profundity. It’s not just about knowing, but in-depth understanding; it requires a person's ability to grasp or comprehend information, too often assumptions and prejudices get in the way of understanding. It is the responsibility of each individual to examine themselves and to make sure they are open to true understanding. Assumptions and prejudices are due to lack of deeper understanding. So far wisdom and knowledge have evolved in humans with their eyes and ears open to understand. Understanding has happened to human, which is a reflection of the intellect that has evolved. The opposite of profundity is superficiality: If you always categorize people via physical identification at skin level, you are not profound; if you only read the content without contextual intelligence, you are not profound; if you only capture the symptom, but not dig through the root cause, you are not profound. Knowledge is neutral and can be used for good and become beautiful -- or it can be used to harm others and becomes ugly. It is unfortunate when we become so narrow in our view that we have to put others down. This is not understanding, this is not knowledge, this is ego! Putting others down reflects superficial understanding and knowledge that has happened to the ego and neither deep understanding nor wisdom. Hopefully, knowledge and understanding lead us to the divine, beauty, truth and empathy.
Can you master multi-dimensional thinking processes? A profound mind is like a big ocean, deep, but also open. It can leverage multiple thinking processes in dealing with varying situations wisely. For example, critical thinking is the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion; Learning critical thinking is also about un-learning bad thinking habits and mistakes in reasoning. If you are referring to the ability to make judgments and to see the big picture, it is true that some people do this naturally. Critical thinking also has been described as "the process of purposeful, self-regulatory judgment, which uses reasoned consideration to evidence, context, conceptualizations, methods, and criteria." On the other side, creative thinking also plays an instrumental role in developing a greater understanding self, others, and the world, or in short, profundity. However, there are far too many who do not fully harness their creative ability when it comes down to defining and in some cases refining their own thought process. Ultimately, creative thinking requires a profound degree of intrapersonal independence and there are far too many people who stand as too intimidated and fearful of harnessing an independent platform in fear of not being good enough in the eyes of others. If we do not direct gradual strides toward its attainment, then we will never know what its substance can do for the potential of our livelihoods. Creativity also helps see problems in multiple dimensions and solve them with passion and innovation.
Do you bring the wisdom in the workplace? Wisdom in the workplace is to have positive mindsets and build an innovative culture. Often at traditional business settings, the noisy wheel gets greased, leadership is more about “loudness,” or fixing the symptom; and workers compete via the easiest, but the unprofessional way. Wisdom in the workplace means accountability to accept the responsibility for what you DO but also what you SAY -no rumor-mongering, no backbiting. Wisdom in the workplace means grooming and mentoring potential leaders now to close cognitive and skill gaps, to have the right people at the right position at the right time. Wisdom would necessarily be concerned with knowing what to say when to say, how to say, whom to say, where to say..as well as knowing what not to say, when not to say, how not to say, whom not to say, where not to say. Wisdom and humility go hand in hand. The more you know, the more you know you don’t know and admit unknown unknown. You become wise when you are humble enough to be aware of and admit what you don't know and share what you know. Wisdom= f(Applying what we think we know, Experience, Learning and unlearning, Sharing Knowledge and Experience).A profound mind is deep, but not depressing; sophisticated, but not complicated; knowledgeable, but not arrogant; creative, but not naive; critical, but not negative; and mature, but not aged. With "VUCA" characteristics of digitalization, Talent Management will see the urgency of being innovative - to see your talent people via different angles.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
