Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1405
September 16, 2015
Are we Capable of being Creative in an Auto Mode?
“Automatic' and 'creative' by their definitions, do not sit comfortably well with each other; but the subconscious capacity can sometimes produce creative ideas for disparate tasks though.
The human progress is all based on our thinking, learning and changing capabilities. We tend to learn things in a series of small steps. Each step is quite simple and the link between steps is not a smooth one. Gradually this evens itself out as we learn whatever it is we are learning. Those initial steps were as they were because we use conscious thinking. When a human interactive task becomes automated, the crux of using our subconscious mind is to appreciate how different it is from our conscious mind. Even though the conscious mind (deliberate thoughts) and subconscious mind (auto mode) exist in the same body, they have vastly different characteristics. One of the interesting debates would be: Are we capable of being creative in an auto mode?
“Automatic' and 'creative' by their definitions, do not sit comfortably well with each other. The conscious mind and subconscious mind cannot be separated. And, if they do not work together, the results can be harmful. Our conscious and subconscious thinking work together. That is nature. Our 'real' thinking happens subconsciously so we are not aware of it happening. However, we become aware of its consequences for they appear as conscious thinking. We specialize in working out the way of doing things that involve the minimum cognitive effort. That involves setting up automatic sequences (schemas) that we can invoke to get repetitive tasks accomplished. It really doesn't matter how complex those tasks are, it matters only that they are performed regularly and repetitively. Subconscious thinking is far more efficient than conscious thinking. The latter is a precursor to communicating just some ideas. However, that repetitive, schematic kind of process is the very antithesis of creativity because, by definition, we are not looking for alternative ways of doing things.
During the repetitive tasks, the subconscious capacity can sometimes produce creative ideas for disparate tasks though. Subconscious thinking is often quick, and efficient. Using that form of thinking, people perform tasks without being aware of what has been done. To be complex as they may be, we have learned them in sufficient detail and with sufficient repetition that we do not need much cognitive effort to perform them. So it is the thinking pattern you have been thought for so many times, and it is ingrained into the auto mode. We have disconnected from our creative interaction with it. We have defaulted to mind and muscle memory. So the good thing about it is that it brings thinking efficiency, but the bad thing is that it could enforce bias or other negative thought patterns. In addition, to be interactively creative within a task is to suppress any automation or disembodiment, to become immersive with it. That is not to say that during this repetitive task that our subconscious capacity cannot or will not produce creative ideas for other related, or even disparate tasks. Not at all, in fact, the more mindless the task, the higher probability of subconscious disruption. In fact, the process of 'preloading' the subconscious capacity with a task (requiring a creative solution) and then deliberately distracting the conscious mind is quite common in creative industries.
The "AHA" moment often comes from the “unexpected moment.” The purposeful manipulation of the stages of 'preparation,' 'incubation,' and 'illumination' is a widespread protocol for creative output among professionals. One of the things that quite dramatically improves the information transfer rate is doing a mindless task, which may go some way to explaining why 'AHA moments' come when you are, for instance, going for a walk. It is not clear whether the task has to be physical (like taking the walk), or whether it could be mental, such as the repetition of the mantra during meditation. Either way it is clear that creativity, in general, can be enhanced by performing a task, with the subject of the creative effort having nothing to do with the task. It is just leaving things to subconscious thinking.
Conscious thinking is primary to ready thoughts for communication, often in language. Although the schematic thinking with the repetitive process is the antithesis of creativity. Our subconscious mind can do “multi-tasking.” It has the thinking capacity to produce the creative ideas for the disparate tasks or even brings those precious “Aha moments.” There exists a wealth of empirical and anecdotal evidence to support the understanding that one may be consciously engaged in one task, only to have the subconscious offer up into conscious thought, proposals and solutions to unrelated tasks. So embrace both your concious and subconcious thinking in the right way.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The human progress is all based on our thinking, learning and changing capabilities. We tend to learn things in a series of small steps. Each step is quite simple and the link between steps is not a smooth one. Gradually this evens itself out as we learn whatever it is we are learning. Those initial steps were as they were because we use conscious thinking. When a human interactive task becomes automated, the crux of using our subconscious mind is to appreciate how different it is from our conscious mind. Even though the conscious mind (deliberate thoughts) and subconscious mind (auto mode) exist in the same body, they have vastly different characteristics. One of the interesting debates would be: Are we capable of being creative in an auto mode?
“Automatic' and 'creative' by their definitions, do not sit comfortably well with each other. The conscious mind and subconscious mind cannot be separated. And, if they do not work together, the results can be harmful. Our conscious and subconscious thinking work together. That is nature. Our 'real' thinking happens subconsciously so we are not aware of it happening. However, we become aware of its consequences for they appear as conscious thinking. We specialize in working out the way of doing things that involve the minimum cognitive effort. That involves setting up automatic sequences (schemas) that we can invoke to get repetitive tasks accomplished. It really doesn't matter how complex those tasks are, it matters only that they are performed regularly and repetitively. Subconscious thinking is far more efficient than conscious thinking. The latter is a precursor to communicating just some ideas. However, that repetitive, schematic kind of process is the very antithesis of creativity because, by definition, we are not looking for alternative ways of doing things.
During the repetitive tasks, the subconscious capacity can sometimes produce creative ideas for disparate tasks though. Subconscious thinking is often quick, and efficient. Using that form of thinking, people perform tasks without being aware of what has been done. To be complex as they may be, we have learned them in sufficient detail and with sufficient repetition that we do not need much cognitive effort to perform them. So it is the thinking pattern you have been thought for so many times, and it is ingrained into the auto mode. We have disconnected from our creative interaction with it. We have defaulted to mind and muscle memory. So the good thing about it is that it brings thinking efficiency, but the bad thing is that it could enforce bias or other negative thought patterns. In addition, to be interactively creative within a task is to suppress any automation or disembodiment, to become immersive with it. That is not to say that during this repetitive task that our subconscious capacity cannot or will not produce creative ideas for other related, or even disparate tasks. Not at all, in fact, the more mindless the task, the higher probability of subconscious disruption. In fact, the process of 'preloading' the subconscious capacity with a task (requiring a creative solution) and then deliberately distracting the conscious mind is quite common in creative industries.
The "AHA" moment often comes from the “unexpected moment.” The purposeful manipulation of the stages of 'preparation,' 'incubation,' and 'illumination' is a widespread protocol for creative output among professionals. One of the things that quite dramatically improves the information transfer rate is doing a mindless task, which may go some way to explaining why 'AHA moments' come when you are, for instance, going for a walk. It is not clear whether the task has to be physical (like taking the walk), or whether it could be mental, such as the repetition of the mantra during meditation. Either way it is clear that creativity, in general, can be enhanced by performing a task, with the subject of the creative effort having nothing to do with the task. It is just leaving things to subconscious thinking. Conscious thinking is primary to ready thoughts for communication, often in language. Although the schematic thinking with the repetitive process is the antithesis of creativity. Our subconscious mind can do “multi-tasking.” It has the thinking capacity to produce the creative ideas for the disparate tasks or even brings those precious “Aha moments.” There exists a wealth of empirical and anecdotal evidence to support the understanding that one may be consciously engaged in one task, only to have the subconscious offer up into conscious thought, proposals and solutions to unrelated tasks. So embrace both your concious and subconcious thinking in the right way.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
What are the Biggest Challenges in Delivering Great Customer Experience?
CX = Revenue is the essential cultural transformation.
Each organization has a different definition of what CX should be. It is critically important to build a formal definition by getting leadership, marketing, sales, customer service, and IT together in a room to speak the same language and setting the common principles and practices to improve CX. Getting organizations to see the value in delivering great CX has always been a challenge. They often consider this as a cost! Can a business become truly customer centric (meeting/exceeding customers expectations) Does it become all too hard or resource heavy?
Changing the culture and breaking down silos is one of the biggest challenges. CX needs to be part of the culture and needs to be sponsored by the C-Suite. As CX is so much about how an organization behaves, and not just what it delivers, the culture is key. Building a platform to communicate and engage all staff and channels with the vision is essential and this vision must be joined up with other major change programs so that staff can see how it all fits together. As long as Customer Experiences are only about the work for a few folks in marketing, it will never succeed. CX needs to be delivered by the business, not a silo. There must be continuity and everyone must own it. There needs to be a change in how CX is understood and a change in the metrics used to measure “success” in order for more significant lasting changes to take place. So a key theme is influencing senior leadership to 'see the light' and embrace CX - inviting them to speak with customers, attend customer calls, get involved in escalations etc could be useful. Engage senior functional leaders to take accountability for the results. Many businesses try to become more "customer-centric" without building a solid foundation to empower people and the business to provide great customer experiences. CX is about culture, and culture is not about people - It IS people. A brilliant place to start is by acknowledging the connection between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction as this is a huge and very underrated success parameter.
From a metrics perspective, the organization needs to show a clear link between CX and revenue. First it needs to define success. What does success look like? How will they know they are successful or progressing toward success? And this success definition goes back to the goals, mission, and strategy. The goal cannot simply be "improving CX.' There must be some definition around it. For what purpose does CX need to be improved? The business needs to ask themselves what they are trying to achieve and then use root cause analysis to determine where CX comes in and how it relates specifically to that goal. CX = Revenue is the essential cultural transformation, and it will hit the businesses soon if not already. And CXOs definitely need to be an essential part of the culture and shown to be a clear link between CX and revenue. "Simple Customer Journey = Simple way to Revenue" concept is something that organizations need to weave into their business plans and business case. Organizations need to believe that great customer experience equates to revenue generation. Savvy CX professionals know how to connect CX improvements to increased profits (revenue minus costs) to get the attention of the C-suite. CX improvements can also decrease costs which can increase profits when revenues are flat.
Silo thinking and a perception that CX is at best a distraction and at worst value destroying. Even with NPS embedded as a core business measure it can still be a struggle to engage, especially if there is no clear line of sight to how recommendations will be delivered. Gaining support for CX is especially difficult when stakeholders know there is no investment for change. The core values of the business also need to be known, lived by and communicated to all employees across-functionally. The elephant in the room is not having the CXO on the CX leadership team. If s/he is not, it will lack teeth and traction. The C-level should also accelerate the removal of silo thinking which makes for a more effective CX effort. The obvious challenge is how often CX becomes just another irrelevant development program to be screwed over by C leaders. It's surprising to see how many companies still don't understand that their entire business is about understanding customers and their major task ever is to form a customer-centric organization always ready to support and deliver customer excellence across the entire value chain.
One effective solution to improve CX is setting principles and implementing governance practices. The best practices include such as, a group of business leaders at the top level who meet weekly for an hour. In these meetings, CX professionals are able to bring issues to them and as a result they began to own them together as a business, rather than push them to one area or silo and hold each other accountable. This helps with a culture change and then organically opened the door to conversations about the vision, mission, and goals and then connecting profitability to the CX improvements and tracking and measuring it. This is not an end-all solution, but it is a great way to get business leaders actively buying into CX and starting to walk the talk.
Customer Experience is an amazing opportunity to differentiate from the competition. Nobody can really deliver the 'same' experience as a competitor. How your team handle customers from their first touch through to their returning loyalty is fraught with traps and challenges. So set three principles: 1). Be a customer, advocate. See it their way, see their likes and dislikes and be honest - would you like to be treated that way? 2). The devil is in the detail. Whenever you buy a product or service where the detail has been thought through and you enjoy the experience. Witness how world-class businesses achieve the same. The things that impress your customers lock them into being loyal. 3). Money matters. If you can link Customer Experience to 'premiums' - be it in prices, loyalty or advocacy of your products to others - then you have something bankable and valuable.
Great CX has become the norm, "understanding your clients," "putting yourself in their shoes," "going above expectations" etc, is what's expected, it's not news anymore. So the greatest challenge in delivering Great Customer Experience is being able to Evolve. And the only way to Evolve is to constantly have information on your customer, where they're at in their lifecycle, learning when to influence them and add extra touch points where necessary. Being able to place them a lifecycle - all of which are always changing. Empowerment is also a significant component, but so is leadership buy-in and management walking the talk. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Each organization has a different definition of what CX should be. It is critically important to build a formal definition by getting leadership, marketing, sales, customer service, and IT together in a room to speak the same language and setting the common principles and practices to improve CX. Getting organizations to see the value in delivering great CX has always been a challenge. They often consider this as a cost! Can a business become truly customer centric (meeting/exceeding customers expectations) Does it become all too hard or resource heavy?
Changing the culture and breaking down silos is one of the biggest challenges. CX needs to be part of the culture and needs to be sponsored by the C-Suite. As CX is so much about how an organization behaves, and not just what it delivers, the culture is key. Building a platform to communicate and engage all staff and channels with the vision is essential and this vision must be joined up with other major change programs so that staff can see how it all fits together. As long as Customer Experiences are only about the work for a few folks in marketing, it will never succeed. CX needs to be delivered by the business, not a silo. There must be continuity and everyone must own it. There needs to be a change in how CX is understood and a change in the metrics used to measure “success” in order for more significant lasting changes to take place. So a key theme is influencing senior leadership to 'see the light' and embrace CX - inviting them to speak with customers, attend customer calls, get involved in escalations etc could be useful. Engage senior functional leaders to take accountability for the results. Many businesses try to become more "customer-centric" without building a solid foundation to empower people and the business to provide great customer experiences. CX is about culture, and culture is not about people - It IS people. A brilliant place to start is by acknowledging the connection between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction as this is a huge and very underrated success parameter.
From a metrics perspective, the organization needs to show a clear link between CX and revenue. First it needs to define success. What does success look like? How will they know they are successful or progressing toward success? And this success definition goes back to the goals, mission, and strategy. The goal cannot simply be "improving CX.' There must be some definition around it. For what purpose does CX need to be improved? The business needs to ask themselves what they are trying to achieve and then use root cause analysis to determine where CX comes in and how it relates specifically to that goal. CX = Revenue is the essential cultural transformation, and it will hit the businesses soon if not already. And CXOs definitely need to be an essential part of the culture and shown to be a clear link between CX and revenue. "Simple Customer Journey = Simple way to Revenue" concept is something that organizations need to weave into their business plans and business case. Organizations need to believe that great customer experience equates to revenue generation. Savvy CX professionals know how to connect CX improvements to increased profits (revenue minus costs) to get the attention of the C-suite. CX improvements can also decrease costs which can increase profits when revenues are flat.
Silo thinking and a perception that CX is at best a distraction and at worst value destroying. Even with NPS embedded as a core business measure it can still be a struggle to engage, especially if there is no clear line of sight to how recommendations will be delivered. Gaining support for CX is especially difficult when stakeholders know there is no investment for change. The core values of the business also need to be known, lived by and communicated to all employees across-functionally. The elephant in the room is not having the CXO on the CX leadership team. If s/he is not, it will lack teeth and traction. The C-level should also accelerate the removal of silo thinking which makes for a more effective CX effort. The obvious challenge is how often CX becomes just another irrelevant development program to be screwed over by C leaders. It's surprising to see how many companies still don't understand that their entire business is about understanding customers and their major task ever is to form a customer-centric organization always ready to support and deliver customer excellence across the entire value chain.
One effective solution to improve CX is setting principles and implementing governance practices. The best practices include such as, a group of business leaders at the top level who meet weekly for an hour. In these meetings, CX professionals are able to bring issues to them and as a result they began to own them together as a business, rather than push them to one area or silo and hold each other accountable. This helps with a culture change and then organically opened the door to conversations about the vision, mission, and goals and then connecting profitability to the CX improvements and tracking and measuring it. This is not an end-all solution, but it is a great way to get business leaders actively buying into CX and starting to walk the talk.
Customer Experience is an amazing opportunity to differentiate from the competition. Nobody can really deliver the 'same' experience as a competitor. How your team handle customers from their first touch through to their returning loyalty is fraught with traps and challenges. So set three principles: 1). Be a customer, advocate. See it their way, see their likes and dislikes and be honest - would you like to be treated that way? 2). The devil is in the detail. Whenever you buy a product or service where the detail has been thought through and you enjoy the experience. Witness how world-class businesses achieve the same. The things that impress your customers lock them into being loyal. 3). Money matters. If you can link Customer Experience to 'premiums' - be it in prices, loyalty or advocacy of your products to others - then you have something bankable and valuable. Great CX has become the norm, "understanding your clients," "putting yourself in their shoes," "going above expectations" etc, is what's expected, it's not news anymore. So the greatest challenge in delivering Great Customer Experience is being able to Evolve. And the only way to Evolve is to constantly have information on your customer, where they're at in their lifecycle, learning when to influence them and add extra touch points where necessary. Being able to place them a lifecycle - all of which are always changing. Empowerment is also a significant component, but so is leadership buy-in and management walking the talk. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
September 15, 2015
The CHANGE Nature of the “Future of CIO” Blog
Digital is all about CHANGEs
The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe.
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.9 million page views with more than #2150th blog posting. Among 50+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting, CHANGE is the very nature of the “Future of CIO” blog, Here are a set of featured “Future of CIO” categories to brainstorm CHANGES:CHANGE Nature of the “Future of CIO” BlogChange Management (200+blogs): Change Management and Strategy Management need to go hand in hand. The goal for change is always to make improvement or innovations happen, and it's a progressive journey to keep business move forward. Change is inevitable, but more than two-thirds of change effort fail to achieve the expected results. The change shouldn't be treated as a singular occurrence when it is an ongoing, continued process and dynamic capability within the organization.
Mind Shifts (250+ Blogs): Thinking is the seed that molds and makes one's life. So, is it true that our thoughts shape our personalities, and visa versa. As a matter of fact, the way we think has much of an effect and affect on how we turn out in our life (though many other things do as well). Some examples might be, who we surround ourselves with, how hard we try to do certain things, whether or not we're repetitive (pending on what the repetition is), choosing left instead of right (or vice versa), the communication styles, the career preferences, or the hobbies and entertainment choice, etc. To put simply, we are what we think of...
3. Digitalization/Digital Master Tuning (250+ Blogs): Digital Master - Debunk the Myths of Enterprise Digital Maturity was published in Jan. 2015, it is the book to envision the multidimensional impact that digital philosophy, technology, innovation, and methodology will have on the future of business and human society. It received overall great feedback in the IT community and beyond. After publishing, I also wrote more than 100+ blogs to continue advocating the best principles and the next practices to run a “Digital Master” - The organization that has rich digital insight , high level innovative capability, and maturity, not only to initiate digital innovation, but also to drive enterprise - wide digital transformation.
4. Innovation/ Creativity (250+ Blogs): Innovation is change. In recent years, creativity has become a very highly valued skill. Creative people combine existing possibilities to reach more often unexpected solutions. Creativity is an essential building block for innovation in business. It is very important to recognize that innovation is an essential factor for a company’s long-term success. However, becoming a truly innovative company is difficult, due to the risks involved and management skills needed. Innovation is about moving forward. In any business, if you are not moving forward, you are moving backward.
5. Principles/Practices/KPIs/System Wisdom: Principles are general guidelines, not overly specific rules, intended to be enduring and seldom amended, that inform and support the way in which an organization sets about fulfilling its mission. For example, simplicity is a both a management principle and a behavioral attitude to see things as and what and where they are and be content and cool as it is. Systems thinking is a methodology for addressing complexity. Systems Thinking is not a methodology, it is underpinned by several fundamental concepts. As Drucker well put, you can only manage what you measure. Key Performance Indicators are set based on how the company goal/objective, business units or project defines success. Each of these entities has a different experience, strengths, skills, people and resources available to them and would deploy their blueprint differently to achieve their strategic mission.
6. Talent Management (200+ Blogs): People are the most invaluable asset in any organization anytime and anywhere. However, the traditional talent management treat people more as cost or resource, less as an asset or capital investment; performance management approaches more focus on measuring behaviors and quantitative result, with ignorance of qualitative assessment about character, mindsets, talent potential, multidimensional intelligence and culture effect. Talent competency is the digital lenses through which people managers ought to assess and manage talent in more strategic, analytical and creative way.
7. Culture Master/Gaps/Global Perspectives/Keywords in 21st Century (100+ blogs): Culture is invisible, but it’s one of the most powerful factors for business’s long-term prosperity; culture is soft, but it's one of the “toughest” ingredients in “digital transformation formula.” Creating a culture itself needs an (internal) strategy. There are many different perspectives of culture presented along with diverse ways and means of dealing with it. How can you identify culture gaps? What’s the global perspectives of culture? What's your culture readiness, how shall you assess culture? Is one of the goals behind building a great culture about whether your culture can help people become who they are, to create synergy and accomplish the business purpose?
8. Digital Leadership (250+Blogs): The digital world today is much more complicated and that requires an ability to juggle multiple and competing demands and clear the vision under cloudy climate and uncertain circumstances. Leadership is first as an advanced mindset, then as a clarified vision and an exemplary behavior. Leadership is about FUTURE! Leadership is about CHANGE. Leadership is about INNOVATION. Leadership is about FOCUS. It is about providing direction, both for oneself and others. It is a basic human ability to inspire self and others to look beyond limitations and make continuous improvement. Leadership is the art of persuasion and the science of disciplines; it’s about the inspiration and motivation; innovation and progression. By choosing to lead, you must have a vision and intention for making that choice, also strike the right balance to run, grow and transform your business seamlessly.9. Food for Thoughts (100+ Blogs): Life is like four seasons, they're ups and downs, good time and bad time. Do you have the self-awareness which has to do with “knowing yourself.” It means knowing how to identify our strengths, our weak areas, our own way of reacting to situations, our preferences (in what situations and in what I'm good or I do not feel at ease), our desires, needs, emotions. Knowing ourselves allows us to predict how successfully we tackle the various situations that life or work will put us in front, going to meet prepared, and thus able to choose situations, behaviors and attitudes based on their functional objectives.
Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.9 million page views with more than #2150th blog posting. Among 50+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting, CHANGE is the very nature of the “Future of CIO” blog, Here are a set of featured “Future of CIO” categories to brainstorm CHANGES:CHANGE Nature of the “Future of CIO” BlogChange Management (200+blogs): Change Management and Strategy Management need to go hand in hand. The goal for change is always to make improvement or innovations happen, and it's a progressive journey to keep business move forward. Change is inevitable, but more than two-thirds of change effort fail to achieve the expected results. The change shouldn't be treated as a singular occurrence when it is an ongoing, continued process and dynamic capability within the organization.
Mind Shifts (250+ Blogs): Thinking is the seed that molds and makes one's life. So, is it true that our thoughts shape our personalities, and visa versa. As a matter of fact, the way we think has much of an effect and affect on how we turn out in our life (though many other things do as well). Some examples might be, who we surround ourselves with, how hard we try to do certain things, whether or not we're repetitive (pending on what the repetition is), choosing left instead of right (or vice versa), the communication styles, the career preferences, or the hobbies and entertainment choice, etc. To put simply, we are what we think of...
3. Digitalization/Digital Master Tuning (250+ Blogs): Digital Master - Debunk the Myths of Enterprise Digital Maturity was published in Jan. 2015, it is the book to envision the multidimensional impact that digital philosophy, technology, innovation, and methodology will have on the future of business and human society. It received overall great feedback in the IT community and beyond. After publishing, I also wrote more than 100+ blogs to continue advocating the best principles and the next practices to run a “Digital Master” - The organization that has rich digital insight , high level innovative capability, and maturity, not only to initiate digital innovation, but also to drive enterprise - wide digital transformation.
4. Innovation/ Creativity (250+ Blogs): Innovation is change. In recent years, creativity has become a very highly valued skill. Creative people combine existing possibilities to reach more often unexpected solutions. Creativity is an essential building block for innovation in business. It is very important to recognize that innovation is an essential factor for a company’s long-term success. However, becoming a truly innovative company is difficult, due to the risks involved and management skills needed. Innovation is about moving forward. In any business, if you are not moving forward, you are moving backward.
5. Principles/Practices/KPIs/System Wisdom: Principles are general guidelines, not overly specific rules, intended to be enduring and seldom amended, that inform and support the way in which an organization sets about fulfilling its mission. For example, simplicity is a both a management principle and a behavioral attitude to see things as and what and where they are and be content and cool as it is. Systems thinking is a methodology for addressing complexity. Systems Thinking is not a methodology, it is underpinned by several fundamental concepts. As Drucker well put, you can only manage what you measure. Key Performance Indicators are set based on how the company goal/objective, business units or project defines success. Each of these entities has a different experience, strengths, skills, people and resources available to them and would deploy their blueprint differently to achieve their strategic mission.
6. Talent Management (200+ Blogs): People are the most invaluable asset in any organization anytime and anywhere. However, the traditional talent management treat people more as cost or resource, less as an asset or capital investment; performance management approaches more focus on measuring behaviors and quantitative result, with ignorance of qualitative assessment about character, mindsets, talent potential, multidimensional intelligence and culture effect. Talent competency is the digital lenses through which people managers ought to assess and manage talent in more strategic, analytical and creative way.
7. Culture Master/Gaps/Global Perspectives/Keywords in 21st Century (100+ blogs): Culture is invisible, but it’s one of the most powerful factors for business’s long-term prosperity; culture is soft, but it's one of the “toughest” ingredients in “digital transformation formula.” Creating a culture itself needs an (internal) strategy. There are many different perspectives of culture presented along with diverse ways and means of dealing with it. How can you identify culture gaps? What’s the global perspectives of culture? What's your culture readiness, how shall you assess culture? Is one of the goals behind building a great culture about whether your culture can help people become who they are, to create synergy and accomplish the business purpose?
8. Digital Leadership (250+Blogs): The digital world today is much more complicated and that requires an ability to juggle multiple and competing demands and clear the vision under cloudy climate and uncertain circumstances. Leadership is first as an advanced mindset, then as a clarified vision and an exemplary behavior. Leadership is about FUTURE! Leadership is about CHANGE. Leadership is about INNOVATION. Leadership is about FOCUS. It is about providing direction, both for oneself and others. It is a basic human ability to inspire self and others to look beyond limitations and make continuous improvement. Leadership is the art of persuasion and the science of disciplines; it’s about the inspiration and motivation; innovation and progression. By choosing to lead, you must have a vision and intention for making that choice, also strike the right balance to run, grow and transform your business seamlessly.9. Food for Thoughts (100+ Blogs): Life is like four seasons, they're ups and downs, good time and bad time. Do you have the self-awareness which has to do with “knowing yourself.” It means knowing how to identify our strengths, our weak areas, our own way of reacting to situations, our preferences (in what situations and in what I'm good or I do not feel at ease), our desires, needs, emotions. Knowing ourselves allows us to predict how successfully we tackle the various situations that life or work will put us in front, going to meet prepared, and thus able to choose situations, behaviors and attitudes based on their functional objectives.
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
What are the Top Challenges in Agile Transformation
The more people you have who don't understand WHY they're doing what they are doing, the harder it will be to change.
Many organizations are in the shift from “doing Agile” to “being Agile.” You're most likely to fail if only development does Agile, and the rest of the organization, in particular, your business stakeholders, do not participate nor understand it. Because doing agile is a methodology and IT management practice, but being Agile is a mindset and culture shift with following the set of Agile principles. So what are the challenges of Agile transformation?
The more people you have who don't understand WHY they're doing what they are doing, the harder it will be to change. These people fear change, because every time there's change, things break, and they don't know why, and they don't know how to fix it without breaking more things. This makes it hard for them to embrace change. Yet, if enough things break and get fixed, they are starting to learn why the fixes that work are good things to do. One of the first things to do is to allow people to make some choices about which path they take - early adopter? mainstream? rearguard? And if rearguard, what will happen when there's no rear to guard?
Overcoming the change inertia of management is crucial for being Agile: Another famous setback is indeed management (middle, higher, project-) who still prefer the fixed time/fixed scope way of working, so are always looking for ways to control the process. Agile advocates the culture of learning and self-management. Managers suddenly felt "powerless" as the progression takes place from the micromanagement of day to day tasks to a self-organizing team. Middle Management has the fear of changes due to their inability to lead but the incessant need to control everything coupled with their unwillingness to change. Managers felt unsettled about what their role actually is in an Agile environment
Introducing the new approaches and processes for training: The hard question here, for any transition, is; how much real learning can you permit, before so many breaks that the business is at risk? Bear in mind that the alternatives are bureaucracy of a different process, and 'training' that is only marginally effective. A favored approach is to introduce the new process with training, then let people break it at a controlled rate. They are there to keep people on track while they have too much to learn to be allowed a totally free rein. They are not there to introduce a different bureaucracy. Yet, many people seem to think they are. Whatever you do, it will be harder if you don't decide up-front, and don't make it clear up-front, what will happen to the people who cannot or will not make the change.
Many think that the hardest things of being Agile are to "responding to change over following a plan" and "individuals and interactions over processes and tools." Because the biggest challenge of Agile transformation is to cultivate the Agile mindset. Making everyone understand that being Agile comes from the mind first. A lack of understanding of Agile that leads to fear among those whom--through that lack of understanding--believe they have a lot to lose. There's more than enough room for everyone to succeed in an agile environment including middle management. Once that fear of change is overcome, the transformation will go much more smoothly.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Many organizations are in the shift from “doing Agile” to “being Agile.” You're most likely to fail if only development does Agile, and the rest of the organization, in particular, your business stakeholders, do not participate nor understand it. Because doing agile is a methodology and IT management practice, but being Agile is a mindset and culture shift with following the set of Agile principles. So what are the challenges of Agile transformation?
The more people you have who don't understand WHY they're doing what they are doing, the harder it will be to change. These people fear change, because every time there's change, things break, and they don't know why, and they don't know how to fix it without breaking more things. This makes it hard for them to embrace change. Yet, if enough things break and get fixed, they are starting to learn why the fixes that work are good things to do. One of the first things to do is to allow people to make some choices about which path they take - early adopter? mainstream? rearguard? And if rearguard, what will happen when there's no rear to guard?
Overcoming the change inertia of management is crucial for being Agile: Another famous setback is indeed management (middle, higher, project-) who still prefer the fixed time/fixed scope way of working, so are always looking for ways to control the process. Agile advocates the culture of learning and self-management. Managers suddenly felt "powerless" as the progression takes place from the micromanagement of day to day tasks to a self-organizing team. Middle Management has the fear of changes due to their inability to lead but the incessant need to control everything coupled with their unwillingness to change. Managers felt unsettled about what their role actually is in an Agile environment
Introducing the new approaches and processes for training: The hard question here, for any transition, is; how much real learning can you permit, before so many breaks that the business is at risk? Bear in mind that the alternatives are bureaucracy of a different process, and 'training' that is only marginally effective. A favored approach is to introduce the new process with training, then let people break it at a controlled rate. They are there to keep people on track while they have too much to learn to be allowed a totally free rein. They are not there to introduce a different bureaucracy. Yet, many people seem to think they are. Whatever you do, it will be harder if you don't decide up-front, and don't make it clear up-front, what will happen to the people who cannot or will not make the change.
Many think that the hardest things of being Agile are to "responding to change over following a plan" and "individuals and interactions over processes and tools." Because the biggest challenge of Agile transformation is to cultivate the Agile mindset. Making everyone understand that being Agile comes from the mind first. A lack of understanding of Agile that leads to fear among those whom--through that lack of understanding--believe they have a lot to lose. There's more than enough room for everyone to succeed in an agile environment including middle management. Once that fear of change is overcome, the transformation will go much more smoothly.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
What is the Critical Role of IT in the Cloud Era?
Cloud IT is not cloudy if you well plan, manage and govern it.
For so long, IT has been perceived by businesses as an inhibitor to productivity, because it is slow to change, and acts as a gatekeeper for businesses to adopt the emerging IT consumerization. With the dawn of the cloud era, the best bet of IT is to understand the various Cloud options (including SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, private, public, hybrid) that deliver self service, instant productivity to the developers and business units - probably in a DevOps model - so that the business units can get product to market in an expedient fashion. IT must be able to help business determine the best avenues / vendor for their workload requirements though, and as such will provide most of the value as a broker between IT services in the marketplace and the developers / business units within their respective organization. More specifically, what is the critical role of IT in the Cloud era?
The cloud IT implies to run bimodal IT in many organizations: The role of IT will be managing legacy applications, and applications run on the cloud. This is where the definition of Bimodal IT makes sense. It’s the practice of managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery, one focuses on stability and the other on agility. One is to keep the light on with industrial speed, the other is to drive business transformation with digital speed. Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasizing safety and accuracy. Mode 2 is exploratory and nonlinear, emphasizing agility and speed.
The key role of IT will remain the same, and it is two-fold: The role of IT is certainly changing and companies experience different lengths of transition period from on premise to cloud based environments depending on sector and size of the business. It somewhat implies that traditional IT is shrinking. However, at large companies, there are so many apps and functions that won’t move all to the cloud in the foreseeable future. But there are some apps (CRM, HCM) that are already moving to the cloud. Smaller companies will move more quickly to the cloud. The key role throughout however will remain the same, and that IT role is two-fold:
-Take charge of application development and live applications and their integration whilst delivering value to internal and external customers alike.
-Contribution to and execution of the company's digital strategy and driving innovation.
IT is foundation of data, information and modern knowledge: Managing data like a company asset will indeed be key functions especially since the data has left the company premise. The fact is that a huge percentage of IT is about the identification and advancement of Knowledge for the enterprise and its people. In fact, most experienced people would debate that, in this digital information age, there isn't really much of an enterprise without the massive oceans of Data & Information that flow through the enterprise, at any given split second. IT is the foundation for massive volumes of Data & Information that is collected, persisted, categorized, mapped, sliced, diced, reordered, related, transformed, and made meaning of... unifying a disparate cloud environment, without which knowledge would be minimal in modern day.
Cloud governance and brokerage are the main things IT will be responsible for in future. The lack of insight into how business units are using IT services right now, often outside of the IT department's knowledge, will increase the importance of good governance and control, SLA, availability, reliability and business needs, in addition to growth and maintenance. - albeit without overly officious / onerous processes. Compliance will not get easier in the future when you think about clouds or hybrid environments. So IT needs really experts that can consult customers in the right way or even create a kind of urgency around that topic.
In the cloud era, the “Critical Role of IT” is having IT as agile business enabler. Agile IT should adopt and evolve to become more reliable, available, cost efficient, secure; with lower cost and lower time to market, also IT should be simpler. Complexity in IT is more value destroying, but simplicity adds more value to IT. IT could replace and update a simple thing with another simple thing; by the other hand, “Critical Role of IT” is how to pay offs complexity taxes for complex process and infrastructure, or how to build simple Micro Systems/Services with lower dependency, lower maintenance cost and lower operation cost; also lowering the risks.
The real challenge to run an effective IT (hybrid IT with the hybrid cloud ) is always about bridging the gap between Business Units and IT. Cloud does provide an unprecedented opportunity to break down the functional silo, brighten the shadow IT, increase business fluidity based on OpEx advantage and DevOp agility, and improve the IT delivery speed via faster deployment, automation and maturity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
For so long, IT has been perceived by businesses as an inhibitor to productivity, because it is slow to change, and acts as a gatekeeper for businesses to adopt the emerging IT consumerization. With the dawn of the cloud era, the best bet of IT is to understand the various Cloud options (including SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, private, public, hybrid) that deliver self service, instant productivity to the developers and business units - probably in a DevOps model - so that the business units can get product to market in an expedient fashion. IT must be able to help business determine the best avenues / vendor for their workload requirements though, and as such will provide most of the value as a broker between IT services in the marketplace and the developers / business units within their respective organization. More specifically, what is the critical role of IT in the Cloud era?
The cloud IT implies to run bimodal IT in many organizations: The role of IT will be managing legacy applications, and applications run on the cloud. This is where the definition of Bimodal IT makes sense. It’s the practice of managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery, one focuses on stability and the other on agility. One is to keep the light on with industrial speed, the other is to drive business transformation with digital speed. Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasizing safety and accuracy. Mode 2 is exploratory and nonlinear, emphasizing agility and speed.
The key role of IT will remain the same, and it is two-fold: The role of IT is certainly changing and companies experience different lengths of transition period from on premise to cloud based environments depending on sector and size of the business. It somewhat implies that traditional IT is shrinking. However, at large companies, there are so many apps and functions that won’t move all to the cloud in the foreseeable future. But there are some apps (CRM, HCM) that are already moving to the cloud. Smaller companies will move more quickly to the cloud. The key role throughout however will remain the same, and that IT role is two-fold:
-Take charge of application development and live applications and their integration whilst delivering value to internal and external customers alike.
-Contribution to and execution of the company's digital strategy and driving innovation.
IT is foundation of data, information and modern knowledge: Managing data like a company asset will indeed be key functions especially since the data has left the company premise. The fact is that a huge percentage of IT is about the identification and advancement of Knowledge for the enterprise and its people. In fact, most experienced people would debate that, in this digital information age, there isn't really much of an enterprise without the massive oceans of Data & Information that flow through the enterprise, at any given split second. IT is the foundation for massive volumes of Data & Information that is collected, persisted, categorized, mapped, sliced, diced, reordered, related, transformed, and made meaning of... unifying a disparate cloud environment, without which knowledge would be minimal in modern day.
Cloud governance and brokerage are the main things IT will be responsible for in future. The lack of insight into how business units are using IT services right now, often outside of the IT department's knowledge, will increase the importance of good governance and control, SLA, availability, reliability and business needs, in addition to growth and maintenance. - albeit without overly officious / onerous processes. Compliance will not get easier in the future when you think about clouds or hybrid environments. So IT needs really experts that can consult customers in the right way or even create a kind of urgency around that topic.
In the cloud era, the “Critical Role of IT” is having IT as agile business enabler. Agile IT should adopt and evolve to become more reliable, available, cost efficient, secure; with lower cost and lower time to market, also IT should be simpler. Complexity in IT is more value destroying, but simplicity adds more value to IT. IT could replace and update a simple thing with another simple thing; by the other hand, “Critical Role of IT” is how to pay offs complexity taxes for complex process and infrastructure, or how to build simple Micro Systems/Services with lower dependency, lower maintenance cost and lower operation cost; also lowering the risks.
The real challenge to run an effective IT (hybrid IT with the hybrid cloud ) is always about bridging the gap between Business Units and IT. Cloud does provide an unprecedented opportunity to break down the functional silo, brighten the shadow IT, increase business fluidity based on OpEx advantage and DevOp agility, and improve the IT delivery speed via faster deployment, automation and maturity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three Questions to Assess a Person's Ability to think strategically
A Strategic thinker always “keeps the end in mind.”
There is no doubt that strategy becomes more important, not less in organizations large or small today, because of the fierce competition, rapid changes, and hyper uncertainty. Digital professionals have to continuously set up standards of competence and ability to enforce professional responsibility, with good intentions, and having capabilities to think strategically, but is there such one question to ask to determine a person’s ability to think strategically?
Do you have a clear vision and keep the end in mind? A Strategic thinker always “keeps the end in mind.” Visions need the system of strategic thinking. A strategic mind gains the understanding of the past and an understanding of the future so far as data permits; a strategic mind has the ability to view the complete business system as an ecosystem with all its dependencies and interconnections; it has the ability to tie all these things together in order to develop actionable plans; it has the ability to identify key leverage points where non-proportional impact can be made; it has the ability to hypothesize interventions and iterate them till the right fit is made.
Are you embracing simplicity or addictive to complication? In a corporate world, you will find the attitude of complicating things in systems and procedures and people love to hang on to the complications and express how they are experts in dealing with complications. Overcoming complication and managing complexity becomes one of the biggest challenges in business today. Strategic and Systems Thinking generally, if not always, strives to find a simple solution.You have done just that with your simple but profound and clear example on how to gauge an individual's thinking style quickly and effectively. Systems Thinking is a methodology for addressing complexity. Firstly, Systems Thinking is not a methodology, it is underpinned by several fundamental concepts. Holism is just one. Systems Thinking allows you to see the whole, in terms of its inner processes, its interactions with external systems, its components, the specific interactions amongst them, etc. So if you are a strategic and system thinker, you will embrace simplicity.
Can you think contextually? A strategic mind is contextual, that awareness of a larger organizational context is valuable, and people should understand how they create value. Such knowledge will motivate many people and make them feel more engaged with their work. context is important, the power of context is in the ways you can change the factors that create a context. For complex problem solving or strategy making, understanding context is often the first and the important step in understanding - without it, you are working without any boundaries, or basis for understanding what you are doing. Context is multidimensional in terms of understanding the scope - functional and physical, and a third aspect, to assist planning, risk assessment etc., and to understand the environment in which the "something" will be developed and then operate. Critical thinking is a crucial element in strategic thinking and an important skill to have in this rapidly changing business environment as well. Recognizing the changing trends and needed corrections to a strategic plan is a huge asset to a company.
There is a need for digital leaders and professionals who can think strategically and possess a curiosity to ask WHY and knowing HOW of what strategic management is. However, there are no magic bullet questions and that one must know what is meant by "strategic." Generally speaking, strategists have a clear vision, can think long term, master at both critical thinking and systems thinking, and they also have creativity to come out the alternative solutions to the old problems or thorny issues. They are the one who can set the right priority, follow the system principles such as simplicity, but also be learning agile to adapt to the changes in the fast-paced digital environment.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
There is no doubt that strategy becomes more important, not less in organizations large or small today, because of the fierce competition, rapid changes, and hyper uncertainty. Digital professionals have to continuously set up standards of competence and ability to enforce professional responsibility, with good intentions, and having capabilities to think strategically, but is there such one question to ask to determine a person’s ability to think strategically?Do you have a clear vision and keep the end in mind? A Strategic thinker always “keeps the end in mind.” Visions need the system of strategic thinking. A strategic mind gains the understanding of the past and an understanding of the future so far as data permits; a strategic mind has the ability to view the complete business system as an ecosystem with all its dependencies and interconnections; it has the ability to tie all these things together in order to develop actionable plans; it has the ability to identify key leverage points where non-proportional impact can be made; it has the ability to hypothesize interventions and iterate them till the right fit is made.
Are you embracing simplicity or addictive to complication? In a corporate world, you will find the attitude of complicating things in systems and procedures and people love to hang on to the complications and express how they are experts in dealing with complications. Overcoming complication and managing complexity becomes one of the biggest challenges in business today. Strategic and Systems Thinking generally, if not always, strives to find a simple solution.You have done just that with your simple but profound and clear example on how to gauge an individual's thinking style quickly and effectively. Systems Thinking is a methodology for addressing complexity. Firstly, Systems Thinking is not a methodology, it is underpinned by several fundamental concepts. Holism is just one. Systems Thinking allows you to see the whole, in terms of its inner processes, its interactions with external systems, its components, the specific interactions amongst them, etc. So if you are a strategic and system thinker, you will embrace simplicity.
Can you think contextually? A strategic mind is contextual, that awareness of a larger organizational context is valuable, and people should understand how they create value. Such knowledge will motivate many people and make them feel more engaged with their work. context is important, the power of context is in the ways you can change the factors that create a context. For complex problem solving or strategy making, understanding context is often the first and the important step in understanding - without it, you are working without any boundaries, or basis for understanding what you are doing. Context is multidimensional in terms of understanding the scope - functional and physical, and a third aspect, to assist planning, risk assessment etc., and to understand the environment in which the "something" will be developed and then operate. Critical thinking is a crucial element in strategic thinking and an important skill to have in this rapidly changing business environment as well. Recognizing the changing trends and needed corrections to a strategic plan is a huge asset to a company.
There is a need for digital leaders and professionals who can think strategically and possess a curiosity to ask WHY and knowing HOW of what strategic management is. However, there are no magic bullet questions and that one must know what is meant by "strategic." Generally speaking, strategists have a clear vision, can think long term, master at both critical thinking and systems thinking, and they also have creativity to come out the alternative solutions to the old problems or thorny issues. They are the one who can set the right priority, follow the system principles such as simplicity, but also be learning agile to adapt to the changes in the fast-paced digital environment.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
September 14, 2015
How to Leverage Systems Thinking in Problem Diagnosing and Solving in Digital Era
You have to dig through the mindset level to diagnose the root causes of problems, and you need to leverage Systems Thinking in framing questions as well.
The world we live in is full of opportunities and problems. Many problems do exist because they are either ill-defined or the concept can not be adequately captured by our current language contextually, or often, they get lost in translation. In addition, there's the problem that the same word means different things to different people because they carry different emotional baggage or have cognitive differences. So what’re the best scenarios for problems diagnosing and problems solving? And how to leverage Systems Thinking in managing them?
There are so many variables and lack of ontological understanding of the evolving world. The world has become over-complex with explosive information. At times, it seems that the expanding universe is more meaningful for expansion of knowledge which expands the universe around us. And so with every problem, we push the limits and create space for more opportunities, and perhaps produce more problems pessimistically. There are so many variables and lack of ontological understanding of the evolving world. As the old saying goes, there is a "Time and Place for Everything." Perhaps this means things catch on when they are supposed to. Maybe the people aren't mentally or consciously ready for some new ideas or alternative solutions. Therefore, more often than not, you have to dig through the mindset level to diagnose the root causes of problems, and changing the game is the mindset.
Understand the problem with context, and follow the logical scenario to diagnose it. Context aids us in understanding what’s relevant and what’s not. From a practical perspective, 'seeing' the context you are 'part' of, allows one to identify the leverage points of the system and then 'choose' the 'decisive' factors, in the attempt to achieve the set purpose. The logical scenario to diagnose the problems include:
1) Identify the problem. What is exactly wrong, out of balance, unjust, etc. the exact description of the problem.
2) Find the factors involved in the final "incorrect" outcome. See if you can measure or weigh each factor's contribution to the result, or the description of the unit of measure.
3) Build a hypothetical equation that describes your "incorrect" outcome. See how changing any of the getting better or worsens that outcome.
Leveraging Systems Thinking in understanding the Butterfly Effect. Often we ignore the problems around us because we can't know the exact cause and effect so the solutions are vague, variable or unknown. All we can do is guessing at the solution and then adjust in retrospect. There are so many variables in today's world, it is nearly impossible to quantify the one cause and effect. So it’s important to leverage Systems Thinking in understanding the problem holistically, to see the trees without missing the forrest. Systems Thinking is not only about asking big questions recognizing the disconnectedness of things belonging within a system, it is also about taking a systematic approach to answering these questions, creating a framework within which the journey between the defined problem (question) and the proposed solution (answer) is clearly articulated with logical steps, assumptions, facts vs. opinions, symptoms vs root cause etc, and ultimately arriving at a valid defensible conclusion.
Since the dawn of the 20th century is partly responsible for many of the prevailing global problems prevailing due to the silo thinking and bureaucracy. Upon the digital paradigm shift we are experiencing at the moment, with the new characteristics such as hyper-connectivity and interdependence of the digital world we live in, leveraging Systems Thinking in diagnosing and problem solving is a strategic imperative. Because it is the common non-systemic view of the world that is being uploaded into every generation by the previous one - that generates most of human dysfunction and destructiveness. Yes, because the world is itself is a system, which means that any view of the world that is not based on the world being a system - must be inaccurate. Yes, because a view of the world that regards it as a system can be the most accurate view of the world, and, as such, is needed. And getting everyone to agree on actual systematic processes would be a great start for intelligent social problem solving.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The world we live in is full of opportunities and problems. Many problems do exist because they are either ill-defined or the concept can not be adequately captured by our current language contextually, or often, they get lost in translation. In addition, there's the problem that the same word means different things to different people because they carry different emotional baggage or have cognitive differences. So what’re the best scenarios for problems diagnosing and problems solving? And how to leverage Systems Thinking in managing them?There are so many variables and lack of ontological understanding of the evolving world. The world has become over-complex with explosive information. At times, it seems that the expanding universe is more meaningful for expansion of knowledge which expands the universe around us. And so with every problem, we push the limits and create space for more opportunities, and perhaps produce more problems pessimistically. There are so many variables and lack of ontological understanding of the evolving world. As the old saying goes, there is a "Time and Place for Everything." Perhaps this means things catch on when they are supposed to. Maybe the people aren't mentally or consciously ready for some new ideas or alternative solutions. Therefore, more often than not, you have to dig through the mindset level to diagnose the root causes of problems, and changing the game is the mindset.
Understand the problem with context, and follow the logical scenario to diagnose it. Context aids us in understanding what’s relevant and what’s not. From a practical perspective, 'seeing' the context you are 'part' of, allows one to identify the leverage points of the system and then 'choose' the 'decisive' factors, in the attempt to achieve the set purpose. The logical scenario to diagnose the problems include:
1) Identify the problem. What is exactly wrong, out of balance, unjust, etc. the exact description of the problem.
2) Find the factors involved in the final "incorrect" outcome. See if you can measure or weigh each factor's contribution to the result, or the description of the unit of measure.
3) Build a hypothetical equation that describes your "incorrect" outcome. See how changing any of the getting better or worsens that outcome.
Leveraging Systems Thinking in understanding the Butterfly Effect. Often we ignore the problems around us because we can't know the exact cause and effect so the solutions are vague, variable or unknown. All we can do is guessing at the solution and then adjust in retrospect. There are so many variables in today's world, it is nearly impossible to quantify the one cause and effect. So it’s important to leverage Systems Thinking in understanding the problem holistically, to see the trees without missing the forrest. Systems Thinking is not only about asking big questions recognizing the disconnectedness of things belonging within a system, it is also about taking a systematic approach to answering these questions, creating a framework within which the journey between the defined problem (question) and the proposed solution (answer) is clearly articulated with logical steps, assumptions, facts vs. opinions, symptoms vs root cause etc, and ultimately arriving at a valid defensible conclusion.
Since the dawn of the 20th century is partly responsible for many of the prevailing global problems prevailing due to the silo thinking and bureaucracy. Upon the digital paradigm shift we are experiencing at the moment, with the new characteristics such as hyper-connectivity and interdependence of the digital world we live in, leveraging Systems Thinking in diagnosing and problem solving is a strategic imperative. Because it is the common non-systemic view of the world that is being uploaded into every generation by the previous one - that generates most of human dysfunction and destructiveness. Yes, because the world is itself is a system, which means that any view of the world that is not based on the world being a system - must be inaccurate. Yes, because a view of the world that regards it as a system can be the most accurate view of the world, and, as such, is needed. And getting everyone to agree on actual systematic processes would be a great start for intelligent social problem solving.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Is HR a Cost Center or Value Added
HR can influence revenue significantly – often indirectly, but there are instances of directly influencing the revenue.
Like corporate IT, HR is traditionally perceived by business as a support function and a cost center. Generally what HR does is to hire the right people, putting them in the right positions to develop a long-term working relationship using an agreed upon development plan which will lower turnover, reducing the termination cost. Turnover reduction ultimately falls on HR and is highly visible to executive leadership in every organization. HR laser focuses on people, but how does HR improve business profitability?
First of all every department in a company is a cost center including the top management team. However, each contributes to profit in a different way, but none to date can measure that in terms of actual dollar contribution. All departments want to define that and data analytics will emerge to do exactly that. HR can and does make an enormous contribution to profit. You can improve that by doing what you do better like hiring practices, employee retention; training at all levels; labor contracts, etc. All fall to the bottom line. Management development and succession planning at the senior levels always seem to be a weakness as many senior line executives like to do their own.
HR should be a good business partner, and HR function does add the value to the business bottom line. Gone are the days when HR was limited to the traditional HR departmental operations only, HR should equally key-into mainstream organizational operations to assist management efforts in any way possible for a better organization. By doing so, productivity will be enhanced and profitability will also improve tremendously. How? From the people that they hire, the intention is to grow the individuals in your teams, in the workspace, thus, increasing your bottom line. However, it is the life thereafter of that individual gets hired, that lays in the line manager’s hands, that should be looked into as well. You as HR can set up all the necessary T&D, onboarding, various on the job initiatives, but the person is still guided by their line management.
HR minds the talent gaps and sets metrics to improve productivity. HR measures and improves the level of current resources productivity or if any gap exists, then HR develops and hire right people, improves key talent retention, employer branding, and proper succession planning that all impact the company’s ultimate profitability. In addition to ensuring that right candidates are hired with proper orientation/induction, HR should equally ensure effective liaison between the management and employees for proper learning and development, career management, compensation and benefit, employee and industrial relations, and the creation of an ideal workplace which will ultimately enhance output and performances. HR are mostly people focused while the other departments are number focused. So HR needs to develop the right set of metrics in appropriate measurement to ensure profitability. Let’s take an example of manpower planning: is the manpower plans worked out in accordance with the required skills to operate the organization systems to achieve their purpose, while keeping in mind the cost of these plans. Most of the CXOs think equally, they want to see numbers in front of them, and frankly, HR is about people investment. Be careful when you expect HR to bring profit to the company and cutting cost. You might end up with losing people.
The biggest challenge for HR has always been quantifying their contribution in the only language that anyone really cares about - profit! HR is undoubtedly considered and viewed as a soft skill expense to most average organizations. The key for the winning organizations is to see HR as a driving engine behind profits by empowering their HR leaders to inspire employees to give their best each and every single day they shop up. This starts with open-minded discussions that place no blame but instead seeks to implement solutions with effective processes. Engaging employees produces profits. There is plenty of lip service paid to 'softer' wins but all shareholders, C-Levels are measuring numbers. If HR wants to deliver profitability they need to be asking the right questions rather than being ready with stock answers. Take 'Engagement' as a great example. What value does an engaged employee deliver to your organization vs. a disengaged employee? In most cases, for most organizations the answer will be - we don't know! And for a CXO, it is the start of a great conversation that could lead to a well-funded project that seeks to discover and innovate to find the answer to the question and learn how to profit from the knowledge.
HR can raise its game and demonstrate its contribution with hard data in the following areas. 1). Clarify every 'mission critical' role in the organization: what is critical about it and what distinctive capabilities its holder requires to deliver the distinctive value. Then ensure that each of these roles has a person in place delivering and improving that value. For HR this means deep business and process understanding, business focused job analysis and evaluation, assessment of the capability of the potential of critical jobholders, plans for succession/disaster recovery if roles become vacant.2) Hard evaluation of HR processes and interventions in terms that CXO top management team can understand. In particular, HR would do well to become the organizational role model at identifying, delivering and evaluating improvement opportunities. Why, because it requires meaningful engagement with workforce HR users and stakeholders - something they keep banging on about and do little to improve!!
Everything about business equates to numbers P&L for its shareholders, including HR. HR has the same business plan with the same numbers in place with yearly, quarterly, monthly numbers. Human Resource has targets and metrics to achieve. The challenge is how to get there, do you use data analytics only, social media, branding, with the right recruiting methods, competitive compensation. Do you have that great partnership with CXOs? When metrics is achieved, turnover is better, best and brightest people are on board, profit plans are met, money will come a bit easier for HR. The biggest contribution HR can make to profitability will vary depending on the business with which you are working. Company strategy has to be your guide to determining the biggest impact you can have on profitability. if you are part of a fast growing start-up company, the biggest impact might be the recruitment to cope with the production/delivery needs of the business. If you are in a downsizing phase it may be the ability to influence key employees to stay and regroup for the future. There is no one size fits all solutions. But whatever it is you are doing, you need to be able to communicate it in terms that make sense to your peers in the organization, your industry, and your shareholders. The credibility of all HR professionals depends on it. HR has to be disciplined in providing regular metrics. They should be consistent in what they measure over time so that impacts can be easily identified during analysis.
People are important. Like IT, HRs can become one of the most strategic department to achieve business goals and values if they act as a great coach, select the key players, continue to play an active role throughout the whole time, not just in the beginning and end, keeping an eye on the competitor (score), and regularly getting feedback from management and staff members. Every person is a cost and associates cost/expense with oneself. You purchase costs to make a profit in the end - directly or indirectly. The quality of investments will determine the profitability and long-term sustainability in the end. HR should be the main driver of quality philosophy because all decisions regarding the organizational survival will be dependent on the induction at each and every level of planning and execution. HR can influence revenue significantly – often indirectly but there are instances of directly influencing the revenue.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Like corporate IT, HR is traditionally perceived by business as a support function and a cost center. Generally what HR does is to hire the right people, putting them in the right positions to develop a long-term working relationship using an agreed upon development plan which will lower turnover, reducing the termination cost. Turnover reduction ultimately falls on HR and is highly visible to executive leadership in every organization. HR laser focuses on people, but how does HR improve business profitability?
First of all every department in a company is a cost center including the top management team. However, each contributes to profit in a different way, but none to date can measure that in terms of actual dollar contribution. All departments want to define that and data analytics will emerge to do exactly that. HR can and does make an enormous contribution to profit. You can improve that by doing what you do better like hiring practices, employee retention; training at all levels; labor contracts, etc. All fall to the bottom line. Management development and succession planning at the senior levels always seem to be a weakness as many senior line executives like to do their own.
HR should be a good business partner, and HR function does add the value to the business bottom line. Gone are the days when HR was limited to the traditional HR departmental operations only, HR should equally key-into mainstream organizational operations to assist management efforts in any way possible for a better organization. By doing so, productivity will be enhanced and profitability will also improve tremendously. How? From the people that they hire, the intention is to grow the individuals in your teams, in the workspace, thus, increasing your bottom line. However, it is the life thereafter of that individual gets hired, that lays in the line manager’s hands, that should be looked into as well. You as HR can set up all the necessary T&D, onboarding, various on the job initiatives, but the person is still guided by their line management.
HR minds the talent gaps and sets metrics to improve productivity. HR measures and improves the level of current resources productivity or if any gap exists, then HR develops and hire right people, improves key talent retention, employer branding, and proper succession planning that all impact the company’s ultimate profitability. In addition to ensuring that right candidates are hired with proper orientation/induction, HR should equally ensure effective liaison between the management and employees for proper learning and development, career management, compensation and benefit, employee and industrial relations, and the creation of an ideal workplace which will ultimately enhance output and performances. HR are mostly people focused while the other departments are number focused. So HR needs to develop the right set of metrics in appropriate measurement to ensure profitability. Let’s take an example of manpower planning: is the manpower plans worked out in accordance with the required skills to operate the organization systems to achieve their purpose, while keeping in mind the cost of these plans. Most of the CXOs think equally, they want to see numbers in front of them, and frankly, HR is about people investment. Be careful when you expect HR to bring profit to the company and cutting cost. You might end up with losing people.
The biggest challenge for HR has always been quantifying their contribution in the only language that anyone really cares about - profit! HR is undoubtedly considered and viewed as a soft skill expense to most average organizations. The key for the winning organizations is to see HR as a driving engine behind profits by empowering their HR leaders to inspire employees to give their best each and every single day they shop up. This starts with open-minded discussions that place no blame but instead seeks to implement solutions with effective processes. Engaging employees produces profits. There is plenty of lip service paid to 'softer' wins but all shareholders, C-Levels are measuring numbers. If HR wants to deliver profitability they need to be asking the right questions rather than being ready with stock answers. Take 'Engagement' as a great example. What value does an engaged employee deliver to your organization vs. a disengaged employee? In most cases, for most organizations the answer will be - we don't know! And for a CXO, it is the start of a great conversation that could lead to a well-funded project that seeks to discover and innovate to find the answer to the question and learn how to profit from the knowledge.
HR can raise its game and demonstrate its contribution with hard data in the following areas. 1). Clarify every 'mission critical' role in the organization: what is critical about it and what distinctive capabilities its holder requires to deliver the distinctive value. Then ensure that each of these roles has a person in place delivering and improving that value. For HR this means deep business and process understanding, business focused job analysis and evaluation, assessment of the capability of the potential of critical jobholders, plans for succession/disaster recovery if roles become vacant.2) Hard evaluation of HR processes and interventions in terms that CXO top management team can understand. In particular, HR would do well to become the organizational role model at identifying, delivering and evaluating improvement opportunities. Why, because it requires meaningful engagement with workforce HR users and stakeholders - something they keep banging on about and do little to improve!!
Everything about business equates to numbers P&L for its shareholders, including HR. HR has the same business plan with the same numbers in place with yearly, quarterly, monthly numbers. Human Resource has targets and metrics to achieve. The challenge is how to get there, do you use data analytics only, social media, branding, with the right recruiting methods, competitive compensation. Do you have that great partnership with CXOs? When metrics is achieved, turnover is better, best and brightest people are on board, profit plans are met, money will come a bit easier for HR. The biggest contribution HR can make to profitability will vary depending on the business with which you are working. Company strategy has to be your guide to determining the biggest impact you can have on profitability. if you are part of a fast growing start-up company, the biggest impact might be the recruitment to cope with the production/delivery needs of the business. If you are in a downsizing phase it may be the ability to influence key employees to stay and regroup for the future. There is no one size fits all solutions. But whatever it is you are doing, you need to be able to communicate it in terms that make sense to your peers in the organization, your industry, and your shareholders. The credibility of all HR professionals depends on it. HR has to be disciplined in providing regular metrics. They should be consistent in what they measure over time so that impacts can be easily identified during analysis.
People are important. Like IT, HRs can become one of the most strategic department to achieve business goals and values if they act as a great coach, select the key players, continue to play an active role throughout the whole time, not just in the beginning and end, keeping an eye on the competitor (score), and regularly getting feedback from management and staff members. Every person is a cost and associates cost/expense with oneself. You purchase costs to make a profit in the end - directly or indirectly. The quality of investments will determine the profitability and long-term sustainability in the end. HR should be the main driver of quality philosophy because all decisions regarding the organizational survival will be dependent on the induction at each and every level of planning and execution. HR can influence revenue significantly – often indirectly but there are instances of directly influencing the revenue.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
September 13, 2015
What is the Attitude
Attitude is one's "Settled Mode of Thinking."
We all have been using this word ATTITUDE so frequently that we take it granted that we can define attitude perfectly, but when we have to put in writing, it appears to be quite difficult. The simplest definition of 'Attitude' would be one's "Settled Mode of Thinking": Attitude manifests itself through one's behavior. It can be changed for sure only if one is willing to accept and give 100 percent to changing oneself. It's a process one will have to go through and takes time. All this is at a time when it is difficult to understand between right and wrong, and thereafter from the choices one makes. Basic nature too plays a role. Perhaps we can add belief about oneself into the mix. How we feel inwardly about ourselves contributes to the overall way we handle our personal interactions with others. Our subconscious judgments about who we are in the sense of a personality and mindset.
Attitude is the compilation and quality of thought transposed to the brain of its personality and mindset, which is moving through human existence. "ATTITUDE" is an individual's personal action navigated by habits, culture in vogue and welcome acceptance of behavior with the objects of cosmos other than self and connected to being and non-beings. Attitude changes from time to time and not long lasting and gets welcome or unwelcome as per minds condition which is phenomenon depending upon various effects within and beyond control. Attitude is basically ''how you react to any situation that comes up?'' It develops based on our beliefs, knowledge, experience, how we are brought up, the company we keep and traits we are born with and significant incidents of our life.etc. Let us see the attitude of taking things in a positive way and choose the actions with enthusiasm, taking a moderate risk with realistic optimism. If we are in the attitude of pessimism and helplessness, we do need to change for living better. The earlier we start seeing life with right kind of attitude, the better will our stay on this beautiful planet, these all the phenomenon of "Attitude."
Having Knowledge, skill and competency is not attitude. There are triple "A"s to achieve goals, Attitude, Aptitude and Altitude. Competency is more related to Aptitude - the Knowledge and Skill for that particular work. It is more related to precision without a fault. Competency is related to the performance and the outcome. If you have the attitude you acquire all these but can't guarantee vice versa. Having attitude makes you positive and ever caring, Aptitude enables you achieve, and altitude leads you to think big. However, in the future, competency can be taken care by Artificial Intelligence to a certain degree. It would be the Attitude towards Humanity, which would need to be relevant. Humans to be effective must master human traits such as empathy, social sensitivity, storytelling, humor and creativity to gain an advantage in the age of machine intelligence.
Attitude is a behavioral response; it is developed on the basis of one's understanding groomed by the growth environment, education, circumstances, and surroundings. Attitude is a vibration...a frequency our human personality carries within it that it exudes around and then affects the world outside through the frequency of this vibration. The higher the frequency of the vibration, the more positive, caring, loving and compassionate the attitude becomes. Attitude is the positive or negative feeling towards a work. A skilled and knowledgeable person may not have attitude and hence not work. Usually, we know what makes us behave in a certain manner and why we make our decisions. Many of us don't want to fully admit when these choices are not coming from the higher standards we set, even for ourselves! So, instead of blaming, others, make excuses, rather than admit the truth to ourselves or anyone else.
Attitude is a way of thinking and a way of looking at the problem. How one looks at a problem - challenge or a threat or danger depends on the attitude of the person if one’s attitude is positive, he/she takes it as a challenge or good opportunity, and if it is negative he or she perceives it as threat or a big problem. Attitude constitutes the belief of the person, the emotions attached to that belief and the action part resulting from both.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
We all have been using this word ATTITUDE so frequently that we take it granted that we can define attitude perfectly, but when we have to put in writing, it appears to be quite difficult. The simplest definition of 'Attitude' would be one's "Settled Mode of Thinking": Attitude manifests itself through one's behavior. It can be changed for sure only if one is willing to accept and give 100 percent to changing oneself. It's a process one will have to go through and takes time. All this is at a time when it is difficult to understand between right and wrong, and thereafter from the choices one makes. Basic nature too plays a role. Perhaps we can add belief about oneself into the mix. How we feel inwardly about ourselves contributes to the overall way we handle our personal interactions with others. Our subconscious judgments about who we are in the sense of a personality and mindset.
Attitude is the compilation and quality of thought transposed to the brain of its personality and mindset, which is moving through human existence. "ATTITUDE" is an individual's personal action navigated by habits, culture in vogue and welcome acceptance of behavior with the objects of cosmos other than self and connected to being and non-beings. Attitude changes from time to time and not long lasting and gets welcome or unwelcome as per minds condition which is phenomenon depending upon various effects within and beyond control. Attitude is basically ''how you react to any situation that comes up?'' It develops based on our beliefs, knowledge, experience, how we are brought up, the company we keep and traits we are born with and significant incidents of our life.etc. Let us see the attitude of taking things in a positive way and choose the actions with enthusiasm, taking a moderate risk with realistic optimism. If we are in the attitude of pessimism and helplessness, we do need to change for living better. The earlier we start seeing life with right kind of attitude, the better will our stay on this beautiful planet, these all the phenomenon of "Attitude."
Having Knowledge, skill and competency is not attitude. There are triple "A"s to achieve goals, Attitude, Aptitude and Altitude. Competency is more related to Aptitude - the Knowledge and Skill for that particular work. It is more related to precision without a fault. Competency is related to the performance and the outcome. If you have the attitude you acquire all these but can't guarantee vice versa. Having attitude makes you positive and ever caring, Aptitude enables you achieve, and altitude leads you to think big. However, in the future, competency can be taken care by Artificial Intelligence to a certain degree. It would be the Attitude towards Humanity, which would need to be relevant. Humans to be effective must master human traits such as empathy, social sensitivity, storytelling, humor and creativity to gain an advantage in the age of machine intelligence.
Attitude is a behavioral response; it is developed on the basis of one's understanding groomed by the growth environment, education, circumstances, and surroundings. Attitude is a vibration...a frequency our human personality carries within it that it exudes around and then affects the world outside through the frequency of this vibration. The higher the frequency of the vibration, the more positive, caring, loving and compassionate the attitude becomes. Attitude is the positive or negative feeling towards a work. A skilled and knowledgeable person may not have attitude and hence not work. Usually, we know what makes us behave in a certain manner and why we make our decisions. Many of us don't want to fully admit when these choices are not coming from the higher standards we set, even for ourselves! So, instead of blaming, others, make excuses, rather than admit the truth to ourselves or anyone else.
Attitude is a way of thinking and a way of looking at the problem. How one looks at a problem - challenge or a threat or danger depends on the attitude of the person if one’s attitude is positive, he/she takes it as a challenge or good opportunity, and if it is negative he or she perceives it as threat or a big problem. Attitude constitutes the belief of the person, the emotions attached to that belief and the action part resulting from both.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The Lengths of the Strategy
Strategy Management cycle is significantly shortened, and strategy-execution is a dynamic continuum.
The length of the strategy depends on many factors, internal and external to the organization: the economy, politics, market conditions, type of business, customer needs or expectation, financial health of your company, your company's flexibility or ability to adapt to change, company culture, capacity, top level management, competitors, Life cycle, product or service, market conditions, technology, etc., and last, but not least, the core purpose of one's company. There is a lot to think about, and strategy duration should be catered to each company and its industry.
Business strategy will have evolving time lines. To give structure and clear goals, you should have 12 months, 3 -years and 5-year strategy in place. If, however, you are a true planner or you are a fuse list company, then a 10-year plan is a feature. The rule of thumb is that the larger the entity the further out your strategy goes. The rationale is simple for this, the larger the entity, the slower it is to react to external and internal pressures. Therefore, you need to plan ahead, and an emergency reaction to market changes are fewer because this costs a lot more to facilitate. There is the distinction between Strategy (repositioning ) and Planning (Operational/Implementation etc) as well. A successful combination of medium versus long term planning is as following - Once the 'where are we' is analyzed; SWOT conducted, strategy is carved; planning is done in three horizons - short-term (1 year), medium-term (3 years) and long-term (5 years).
Strategy Management cycle is significantly shortened, and strategy-execution is a dynamic continuum. A lot depends on the type of business, and now because the technology, market conditions etc. are changing very fast, no matter you are building a longer term vision or medium term strategy, strategy-execution is an iterative continuum. When organizations incorporate innovation and decrease the strategic plan to 12-36 months, it is important to have a strategy focus team whose core focus is to capture and monitor the information similar to a PMO structure. That will keep data centralized and accessible as variables change. Additionally, as you shorten the timeframe, the STARTING POINT should be communicated as well. Often times, confusion is around: does the clock start ticking at month one of planning or month one after execution? Clarity around that paired with the industry should give more insight on whether to decrease or not. You MUST incorporate performance based measurables and monitor the results monthly to stay on track. Otherwise, you can not quickly address issues and keep the business on track to achieving the goals. Make sure your measurables are 'performance' based, are easily measured (numbers, percentages, etc...), they are linked to the company goals, and that the staff are held accountable to the measurables.
Companies consciously or subconsciously choose to compete and grow in one of the following ways. Sometimes actions speak louder than words. Many companies that are clearly following one of these strategies, have never articulated it as such. If they have, the time horizons and innovation models to support them are clearly different. Often companies articulate one but are clearly following another. Furthermore, in developing one's strategy, especially if done methodically and thinking about the SWOT analysis done, you've thought about all the risks and threats. You've anticipated that some things will happen in the near, short, and long-term that might be somewhat painful, but necessary to achieve the goals. You've mitigated those risks and threats. All too often though, the leader is forced to placate impatient stakeholders reacting to a share price dip or less than expected earnings reports. -Market Positioning (having a robust enough view of future to enter new domains before they take off) -Launching major new products and platforms -Competing on cost -Random acquisitions-Acquiring adjacent businesses -Launching many incremental innovations
Vision, strategy, goals, and objectives are all important to ensure the effectiveness of strategy management. in today’s world we have a real lack of forward thinking (vision) and the transformational leadership necessary to really move people and organizations forward. In so many cases executive management get so uptight about plans, mission statements and integrating strategies that they can’t “tell” a simple and very clear story about what the company, the product, the project is really about and where it needs to go. If you look at the most successful leaders what is most common in their skills was the ability to articulate a vision, a way forward that everyone clearly understood. The strength of their ability to tell the story overcame any and all objections because they were very honest that vision may not be for everyone, that some will not go, that some will leave during the journey. Success resulted from everyone know where they were going. After clarifying the vision, it’s also important to define the goals. Such goals should be really tough but reachable, clearly defined, positive and should have passed an eco-check. Such a goal allows to define a strategic plan (sometimes more than one, which requires decision-making capabilities). It is the best to develop the plan in backward thinking from the goal in order to define the critical pathway and which steps needs to be fulfilled by when in order to reach the goal in time. However, we need to be aware that such visions, goals, and strategic plans have been defined on the best option and knowledge at the time they were defined and worked out. This at the end means no matter how long in advance you plan (the more short term, the more precise it can be done), the key is that on a regular base there needs to be a check, where the following questions needs to be raised: -Is the vision still valid in the continuous changing environment? Is there an adjustment needed? -Are the targets still in line with the vision? Do we have newer information which needs to be addressed? Does this impact the strategic plan?
Even the strategy management cycle is significantly shortened, but no strategy is not a good strategy. Some companies have not just survived, but done quite well, without any real strategy. Some are fast followers and others claim the ability to react as their strength. While these companies may be financially successful, people inside have no common view of where the company is going, which impacts decision making. “Our strategy is nothing more, and nothing less, than the sum of our tactics.” More firms are like this than what they are willing to admit it. The key thing is to align the company to the business dynamics or in short change management! Boils down to risk appetite. Taking bigger risks can help to achieve goals faster. Each strategy should be assessed against the organization's risk tolerance rather than a target date. Jim Collins writes in the book Built To Last that the core purpose for a company should last for 100 years while the business strategy might change many times within the 100 years. So the strategic goal might be set to any number of years that make sense in the specific business you're into, but remember that the core purpose should be very, very long term.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The length of the strategy depends on many factors, internal and external to the organization: the economy, politics, market conditions, type of business, customer needs or expectation, financial health of your company, your company's flexibility or ability to adapt to change, company culture, capacity, top level management, competitors, Life cycle, product or service, market conditions, technology, etc., and last, but not least, the core purpose of one's company. There is a lot to think about, and strategy duration should be catered to each company and its industry.
Business strategy will have evolving time lines. To give structure and clear goals, you should have 12 months, 3 -years and 5-year strategy in place. If, however, you are a true planner or you are a fuse list company, then a 10-year plan is a feature. The rule of thumb is that the larger the entity the further out your strategy goes. The rationale is simple for this, the larger the entity, the slower it is to react to external and internal pressures. Therefore, you need to plan ahead, and an emergency reaction to market changes are fewer because this costs a lot more to facilitate. There is the distinction between Strategy (repositioning ) and Planning (Operational/Implementation etc) as well. A successful combination of medium versus long term planning is as following - Once the 'where are we' is analyzed; SWOT conducted, strategy is carved; planning is done in three horizons - short-term (1 year), medium-term (3 years) and long-term (5 years).
Strategy Management cycle is significantly shortened, and strategy-execution is a dynamic continuum. A lot depends on the type of business, and now because the technology, market conditions etc. are changing very fast, no matter you are building a longer term vision or medium term strategy, strategy-execution is an iterative continuum. When organizations incorporate innovation and decrease the strategic plan to 12-36 months, it is important to have a strategy focus team whose core focus is to capture and monitor the information similar to a PMO structure. That will keep data centralized and accessible as variables change. Additionally, as you shorten the timeframe, the STARTING POINT should be communicated as well. Often times, confusion is around: does the clock start ticking at month one of planning or month one after execution? Clarity around that paired with the industry should give more insight on whether to decrease or not. You MUST incorporate performance based measurables and monitor the results monthly to stay on track. Otherwise, you can not quickly address issues and keep the business on track to achieving the goals. Make sure your measurables are 'performance' based, are easily measured (numbers, percentages, etc...), they are linked to the company goals, and that the staff are held accountable to the measurables.
Companies consciously or subconsciously choose to compete and grow in one of the following ways. Sometimes actions speak louder than words. Many companies that are clearly following one of these strategies, have never articulated it as such. If they have, the time horizons and innovation models to support them are clearly different. Often companies articulate one but are clearly following another. Furthermore, in developing one's strategy, especially if done methodically and thinking about the SWOT analysis done, you've thought about all the risks and threats. You've anticipated that some things will happen in the near, short, and long-term that might be somewhat painful, but necessary to achieve the goals. You've mitigated those risks and threats. All too often though, the leader is forced to placate impatient stakeholders reacting to a share price dip or less than expected earnings reports. -Market Positioning (having a robust enough view of future to enter new domains before they take off) -Launching major new products and platforms -Competing on cost -Random acquisitions-Acquiring adjacent businesses -Launching many incremental innovations
Vision, strategy, goals, and objectives are all important to ensure the effectiveness of strategy management. in today’s world we have a real lack of forward thinking (vision) and the transformational leadership necessary to really move people and organizations forward. In so many cases executive management get so uptight about plans, mission statements and integrating strategies that they can’t “tell” a simple and very clear story about what the company, the product, the project is really about and where it needs to go. If you look at the most successful leaders what is most common in their skills was the ability to articulate a vision, a way forward that everyone clearly understood. The strength of their ability to tell the story overcame any and all objections because they were very honest that vision may not be for everyone, that some will not go, that some will leave during the journey. Success resulted from everyone know where they were going. After clarifying the vision, it’s also important to define the goals. Such goals should be really tough but reachable, clearly defined, positive and should have passed an eco-check. Such a goal allows to define a strategic plan (sometimes more than one, which requires decision-making capabilities). It is the best to develop the plan in backward thinking from the goal in order to define the critical pathway and which steps needs to be fulfilled by when in order to reach the goal in time. However, we need to be aware that such visions, goals, and strategic plans have been defined on the best option and knowledge at the time they were defined and worked out. This at the end means no matter how long in advance you plan (the more short term, the more precise it can be done), the key is that on a regular base there needs to be a check, where the following questions needs to be raised: -Is the vision still valid in the continuous changing environment? Is there an adjustment needed? -Are the targets still in line with the vision? Do we have newer information which needs to be addressed? Does this impact the strategic plan?
Even the strategy management cycle is significantly shortened, but no strategy is not a good strategy. Some companies have not just survived, but done quite well, without any real strategy. Some are fast followers and others claim the ability to react as their strength. While these companies may be financially successful, people inside have no common view of where the company is going, which impacts decision making. “Our strategy is nothing more, and nothing less, than the sum of our tactics.” More firms are like this than what they are willing to admit it. The key thing is to align the company to the business dynamics or in short change management! Boils down to risk appetite. Taking bigger risks can help to achieve goals faster. Each strategy should be assessed against the organization's risk tolerance rather than a target date. Jim Collins writes in the book Built To Last that the core purpose for a company should last for 100 years while the business strategy might change many times within the 100 years. So the strategic goal might be set to any number of years that make sense in the specific business you're into, but remember that the core purpose should be very, very long term.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
