Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1410
August 28, 2015
How to Build Sustainable Motivation?
Motivation is often innate, not necessarily learned, whether motivating oneself or others.
Motivation is often innate, and it is different for each one according to cognition, personality and circumstances. Motivation is not only about the feeling, but a combination of several emotions also describes the trajectory of behavior. Motivation fluctuates and when it does can we still be honest and say yes a bit low today. Which requires being in the moment and facing self now. Most of the motivations are a short run, but how to build sustainable motivation? And how to strike the right balance between the two important factors of motivation “push” and “pull”?
Motivation is often innate, not necessarily learned, whether motivating oneself or others. In other words, motivation comes or should come from within. The first step is being real - if this authentic - something we embody, we aspire to be - and move from within and go beyond. Leading by example is one of the most effective methods of motivation, whether it is a personal drive to succeed, to make a difference or helping others to be successful takes different mindsets, attributes, and personal goals. Motivation can come and go just as easy - if it is not the heart desire, a true passion, an authentic expression. Letting people explore where their energy is and then align the energy to work at hand. On the other hand, many expect that nothing needs to be done. Success, however, requires determination, persistence, dedication and practice in the present - right now. Many people live in the future or the past and miss the opportunity at hand.
Motivation is perhaps a combination of several emotions, Focus provides motivation and demolishes negative emotion. Maybe you have to make certain what it is you are going after in that motivation. Motivation is the "cognitive momentum" that comes from consistently applying the habits congruent with the achievement of the goal. Ultimately the answer lies in focus. The purpose is the greatest motivator; a deep desire to make the world a better place and fueled by a sense of gratitude and responsibility that compels you to stay committed. When motivation seems to fade away sometimes, forgiveness of self first heals and recharges so does a good sense of humor.
Motivation goes to sustainability. Giving commitment is hard work requires reward of which can be anything depends on needs. Thus, knowing what makes one to tick is critical. Having attributes of a leader in oneself will be the acumen. So is it easy to tell if the person is motivated or is full of fear? When a person is motivated by fear, the motivation is short lived. After realizing there is nothing to fear after all, the motivation levels goes down. In an organizational context, this can be very complex. It’s important to develop the process of a corporate pulse that identifies where the pulse/passion/motivation/commitment of the organization lies, and who embodies it - who is willing? Who is motivated out of fear?
From a talent development management perspective, motivation is about creating the greatest value to motivate talent development. It is combining a range of value creating, motivating, value protecting and monitoring strategies. Fear is an effective motivator but only for a short run. As soon as you remove the threat the motivation is removed as well. True leaders don't lead by fear but rather by respect. Mutual respect goes both ways up-and-down the ladder. A motivational leader creates synergy in strengthening positive thinking and driving the good behaviors.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Motivation is often innate, and it is different for each one according to cognition, personality and circumstances. Motivation is not only about the feeling, but a combination of several emotions also describes the trajectory of behavior. Motivation fluctuates and when it does can we still be honest and say yes a bit low today. Which requires being in the moment and facing self now. Most of the motivations are a short run, but how to build sustainable motivation? And how to strike the right balance between the two important factors of motivation “push” and “pull”?Motivation is often innate, not necessarily learned, whether motivating oneself or others. In other words, motivation comes or should come from within. The first step is being real - if this authentic - something we embody, we aspire to be - and move from within and go beyond. Leading by example is one of the most effective methods of motivation, whether it is a personal drive to succeed, to make a difference or helping others to be successful takes different mindsets, attributes, and personal goals. Motivation can come and go just as easy - if it is not the heart desire, a true passion, an authentic expression. Letting people explore where their energy is and then align the energy to work at hand. On the other hand, many expect that nothing needs to be done. Success, however, requires determination, persistence, dedication and practice in the present - right now. Many people live in the future or the past and miss the opportunity at hand.
Motivation is perhaps a combination of several emotions, Focus provides motivation and demolishes negative emotion. Maybe you have to make certain what it is you are going after in that motivation. Motivation is the "cognitive momentum" that comes from consistently applying the habits congruent with the achievement of the goal. Ultimately the answer lies in focus. The purpose is the greatest motivator; a deep desire to make the world a better place and fueled by a sense of gratitude and responsibility that compels you to stay committed. When motivation seems to fade away sometimes, forgiveness of self first heals and recharges so does a good sense of humor.
Motivation goes to sustainability. Giving commitment is hard work requires reward of which can be anything depends on needs. Thus, knowing what makes one to tick is critical. Having attributes of a leader in oneself will be the acumen. So is it easy to tell if the person is motivated or is full of fear? When a person is motivated by fear, the motivation is short lived. After realizing there is nothing to fear after all, the motivation levels goes down. In an organizational context, this can be very complex. It’s important to develop the process of a corporate pulse that identifies where the pulse/passion/motivation/commitment of the organization lies, and who embodies it - who is willing? Who is motivated out of fear?
From a talent development management perspective, motivation is about creating the greatest value to motivate talent development. It is combining a range of value creating, motivating, value protecting and monitoring strategies. Fear is an effective motivator but only for a short run. As soon as you remove the threat the motivation is removed as well. True leaders don't lead by fear but rather by respect. Mutual respect goes both ways up-and-down the ladder. A motivational leader creates synergy in strengthening positive thinking and driving the good behaviors.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
August 27, 2015
Are You a System Thinking Master
Systems Thinking is a holistic, balanced and often an abstract thinking to understand things profoundly.
People are all a bundle of assumptions, a collection of cause-and-effects, and a limited ability to put all this together to create the sense of reality. We use our sense of reality to try to understand our world and solve the problems it presents us with, making decisions as to how to interact with our environment. This is adequate to deal with our everyday lives, but quite inadequate to fully deal with the complexity of much of the dynamic world that surrounds us. Many of our assumptions may be false, and some of our cause-and-effects are probably wrong. Therefore, Systems Thinking is emerged as a type of digital thinking to deal with such unprecedented complexity. The Systemizing Quotient (SQ) gives a score based on how interested you assess yourself to be in each of the following forms of systemizing. Systemizing is the drive to analyze and explore a system, to extract underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a system; and the drive to construct systems. Systems thinking helps us understand such processes rather than be purely in the moment or in the flow.
Systems Thinking is the ability to navigate levels of abstraction or logic as an essential thinking skill for STers. You can readily observe massive differentials between individuals and communities in their ability to do this particular skill. We are only just beginning to recognize the need for that level of systemic sophistication. Most folks follow the conventional way of thinking, it is what they have always been taught and learnt to do. -Systems Thinking needs to discover the interconnectivity and interdependence, therefore you need to be looking for something “hidden,” which is not always obvious, you don't just accidently find it, you structure the thinking process to discover the patterns.- You need to have an open mind where most don't, most traditional thinking minds are clouded by past experiences and conventional wisdom, Systems Thinkers desire to listen to the different viewpoint.-Systems Thinking will always struggle until it is taught in mainstream educational systems.
Systems Thinking advocates the culture of inclusiveness. From a development point of view, it is interesting to think about the challenges that come with integrating systems thinking into individual behavior, and perhaps most importantly, the influence of social systems that value it or not. We humans are social beings, when we learn from others, we chose to learn mostly from those people who challenge our beliefs the least. Thus, we fall into groups of like-minded people. We tend to be hostile to those who most disturb our beliefs, and in the process preserve the beliefs of the groups with which we associate. As we attempt to preserve harmony within our own sense of reality, we create conflicts between our group and other groups that have their own senses of reality that conflict with ours. Thus, disagreements and antagonisms arise between groups. This may lead to our simply ignoring these other groups. Or it can cause us to rationalize our own sense of reality by disempowering. By pre-judging people motives without actually analyzing through questioning or research, we ourselves demonstrate at least non-systemic thinking. So as to avoid making repeated mistakes, we must then, if we understand there are different opinions or we are making a mistake; go deeper into Systems Thinking to ask why we make these mistakes, why there are differences, and realign or reorient our model. Systems Thinking helps discover the connectivity and common ground from the difference and dig into the paradoxical intelligence between seemly two separate views. And therefore, it advocates inclusiveness and embrace diverse PoVs.
Systems thinking is often equated to balanced thinking. Systems Thinking can also be defined as putting on the foreground relations and on the background the components of these relations. ST has to do with the ability to see the whole, and the relationships between parts within those wholes, and to grasp the complexity - deal with nonlinear questions that have contingent and flexing answers as the conditions change. Systems Thinking engenders new actions as part of the process of creating cross-disciplined understanding. What is powerful about Systems Thinking is that it’s concerned with wholes changes of the scope, thereby engendering new action, Systems Thinking is part of the process of creating understanding and striking the right balance either making strategy or problem-solving. ST is also a set of tools that you can use - success comes from knowing when to apply which tool and when not to.
Most people are uncomfortable with questions that don't have clear answers, and most of the people have been schooled to believe that they must know the answer and that there is an answer, even when faced with a wicked problem. Most people don't like to think at all and of the remainder, people want to cut the problem into pieces and deal with one at a time. Only about 5% of population are System Thinking masters. Some thought System Thinkers are the slow decision maker, others thought Systems Thinking is the privilege of System Engineers or scientists. In essence, Systems Thinking is nothing more than the well combination of analytic and synthetic thinking, see the trees without missing the forest; quantify not just the hard data, but also the soft variables; go beyond the surface to dig through the root cause of problem arising, and take a scientific approach to explore the nature and universe. It is a holistic, balanced and often an abstract thinking to understand things profoundly.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
People are all a bundle of assumptions, a collection of cause-and-effects, and a limited ability to put all this together to create the sense of reality. We use our sense of reality to try to understand our world and solve the problems it presents us with, making decisions as to how to interact with our environment. This is adequate to deal with our everyday lives, but quite inadequate to fully deal with the complexity of much of the dynamic world that surrounds us. Many of our assumptions may be false, and some of our cause-and-effects are probably wrong. Therefore, Systems Thinking is emerged as a type of digital thinking to deal with such unprecedented complexity. The Systemizing Quotient (SQ) gives a score based on how interested you assess yourself to be in each of the following forms of systemizing. Systemizing is the drive to analyze and explore a system, to extract underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a system; and the drive to construct systems. Systems thinking helps us understand such processes rather than be purely in the moment or in the flow.
Systems Thinking is the ability to navigate levels of abstraction or logic as an essential thinking skill for STers. You can readily observe massive differentials between individuals and communities in their ability to do this particular skill. We are only just beginning to recognize the need for that level of systemic sophistication. Most folks follow the conventional way of thinking, it is what they have always been taught and learnt to do. -Systems Thinking needs to discover the interconnectivity and interdependence, therefore you need to be looking for something “hidden,” which is not always obvious, you don't just accidently find it, you structure the thinking process to discover the patterns.- You need to have an open mind where most don't, most traditional thinking minds are clouded by past experiences and conventional wisdom, Systems Thinkers desire to listen to the different viewpoint.-Systems Thinking will always struggle until it is taught in mainstream educational systems.
Systems Thinking advocates the culture of inclusiveness. From a development point of view, it is interesting to think about the challenges that come with integrating systems thinking into individual behavior, and perhaps most importantly, the influence of social systems that value it or not. We humans are social beings, when we learn from others, we chose to learn mostly from those people who challenge our beliefs the least. Thus, we fall into groups of like-minded people. We tend to be hostile to those who most disturb our beliefs, and in the process preserve the beliefs of the groups with which we associate. As we attempt to preserve harmony within our own sense of reality, we create conflicts between our group and other groups that have their own senses of reality that conflict with ours. Thus, disagreements and antagonisms arise between groups. This may lead to our simply ignoring these other groups. Or it can cause us to rationalize our own sense of reality by disempowering. By pre-judging people motives without actually analyzing through questioning or research, we ourselves demonstrate at least non-systemic thinking. So as to avoid making repeated mistakes, we must then, if we understand there are different opinions or we are making a mistake; go deeper into Systems Thinking to ask why we make these mistakes, why there are differences, and realign or reorient our model. Systems Thinking helps discover the connectivity and common ground from the difference and dig into the paradoxical intelligence between seemly two separate views. And therefore, it advocates inclusiveness and embrace diverse PoVs.
Systems thinking is often equated to balanced thinking. Systems Thinking can also be defined as putting on the foreground relations and on the background the components of these relations. ST has to do with the ability to see the whole, and the relationships between parts within those wholes, and to grasp the complexity - deal with nonlinear questions that have contingent and flexing answers as the conditions change. Systems Thinking engenders new actions as part of the process of creating cross-disciplined understanding. What is powerful about Systems Thinking is that it’s concerned with wholes changes of the scope, thereby engendering new action, Systems Thinking is part of the process of creating understanding and striking the right balance either making strategy or problem-solving. ST is also a set of tools that you can use - success comes from knowing when to apply which tool and when not to.
Most people are uncomfortable with questions that don't have clear answers, and most of the people have been schooled to believe that they must know the answer and that there is an answer, even when faced with a wicked problem. Most people don't like to think at all and of the remainder, people want to cut the problem into pieces and deal with one at a time. Only about 5% of population are System Thinking masters. Some thought System Thinkers are the slow decision maker, others thought Systems Thinking is the privilege of System Engineers or scientists. In essence, Systems Thinking is nothing more than the well combination of analytic and synthetic thinking, see the trees without missing the forest; quantify not just the hard data, but also the soft variables; go beyond the surface to dig through the root cause of problem arising, and take a scientific approach to explore the nature and universe. It is a holistic, balanced and often an abstract thinking to understand things profoundly.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
IT as a Business Innovation Enabler
IT is transforming from a static -”built to last” back-office function to a more dynamic “built to design” business enabler
CIOs are the link between the business and the IT world and, therefore CIOs must play a proactive role in Enterprise Strategy. They definitely must have a deeper understanding about the business to ensure that IT initiatives enable and catalyze the business strategy execution, and business initiatives are able to be supported by IT. And to move up its maturity, IT has to be run as a business solution provider and an innovation engine.
IT is not just a set of tools to improve efficiency, but a business solution providers moving from functioning to delight. IT can introduce a 'measure' for assessing the potential for any improvement opportunity, feature enhancement, or initiative to offer a competitive advantage. For example, often organizations are biased heavily toward productivity and revenue enablement, which don't necessarily excite employees to see this as a great workplace, or customers to see IT as a very thoughtful and innovative provider. So it’s an opportunity for IT to leverage efficient and fun tools to delight employees or delight customers at the touch point of their Customer Experience. You have to model all of this in a way that it could be embedded in the way you work - you do not want this to become another department or cost center in the steady state. You can introduce some mechanisms to recognize and reward people for taking the lead - to highlight and accelerate the business innovation journey.
IT advocates and builds the culture of “Autonomy, Discovery and Mastery”: IT is at a unique position to oversight business processes, that’s why it can play a significant role in tangibilizing the invisible - culture via optimizing business processes and re-tuning organizational structure. Re-reinforcement of the desired organizational culture also needs to be done through training and development, coaching, mentoring, continuous and objective performance review and feedback. Promote personal mastery - individual employees need to know and understand themselves before the organization. Promote organizational mastery - well alignment of the individual to the organization, and understanding fully and living the strategic foundations of the organization.
IT should not just run the business today, but help “grows the business” for tomorrow. IT leadership has, for some time now, been focused on driving efficiency on company's systems of record. Even if you have an operation’s "run the business" budget and a "grow the business" project portfolio, you shouldn’t sacrifice tomorrow ("transform the business") in favor of solving today's, or yesterday's problems, so you can keep running the business for long-term. IT people need to add new skills to assure they have the enough tools to influence the business and to understand requirements, this includes human side skills, like leadership, coaching and teamwork with others than technical groups. This will be the first step to ensuring having the correct approach with the business, ensuring empathy with customers and peers. IT can not rely only in high degree of technical knowledge, at the end people receives the service and evaluates value on the group to support budget and headcount. One way to help the business is to show a total effort and cost of ownership for a solution. For example, a business area has an idea to rapidly implement a SaaS solution. The business may only look at the subscription cost and not consider administration, software modification costs, integration costs, and compliance costs including documentation. So the conversation is not about telling the business "no," but educating them on the ownership of the solution and who/how/where to manage solution. In some cases, the IT organization is better suited to implement the SaaS solution with better governance discipline.
IT leaders have been tech nerds for too long, not taking interest in true customer service, innovation, business thinking and so on. Just as 'the business' sees it increasingly needs more IT to develop and innovate core products and processes and demand that IT delivers, so should IT understands what it can offer to meet that demand and even surpass it by sparking business innovations made possible by technology push and information pull. IT is transforming from a static -”built to last” back office function to a more dynamic “built to design” business solution provider. It also highlights the role of IT leadership that is not static and has to be proactive to the ever changing environment, and often in real time.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
CIOs are the link between the business and the IT world and, therefore CIOs must play a proactive role in Enterprise Strategy. They definitely must have a deeper understanding about the business to ensure that IT initiatives enable and catalyze the business strategy execution, and business initiatives are able to be supported by IT. And to move up its maturity, IT has to be run as a business solution provider and an innovation engine.
IT is not just a set of tools to improve efficiency, but a business solution providers moving from functioning to delight. IT can introduce a 'measure' for assessing the potential for any improvement opportunity, feature enhancement, or initiative to offer a competitive advantage. For example, often organizations are biased heavily toward productivity and revenue enablement, which don't necessarily excite employees to see this as a great workplace, or customers to see IT as a very thoughtful and innovative provider. So it’s an opportunity for IT to leverage efficient and fun tools to delight employees or delight customers at the touch point of their Customer Experience. You have to model all of this in a way that it could be embedded in the way you work - you do not want this to become another department or cost center in the steady state. You can introduce some mechanisms to recognize and reward people for taking the lead - to highlight and accelerate the business innovation journey.
IT advocates and builds the culture of “Autonomy, Discovery and Mastery”: IT is at a unique position to oversight business processes, that’s why it can play a significant role in tangibilizing the invisible - culture via optimizing business processes and re-tuning organizational structure. Re-reinforcement of the desired organizational culture also needs to be done through training and development, coaching, mentoring, continuous and objective performance review and feedback. Promote personal mastery - individual employees need to know and understand themselves before the organization. Promote organizational mastery - well alignment of the individual to the organization, and understanding fully and living the strategic foundations of the organization.
IT should not just run the business today, but help “grows the business” for tomorrow. IT leadership has, for some time now, been focused on driving efficiency on company's systems of record. Even if you have an operation’s "run the business" budget and a "grow the business" project portfolio, you shouldn’t sacrifice tomorrow ("transform the business") in favor of solving today's, or yesterday's problems, so you can keep running the business for long-term. IT people need to add new skills to assure they have the enough tools to influence the business and to understand requirements, this includes human side skills, like leadership, coaching and teamwork with others than technical groups. This will be the first step to ensuring having the correct approach with the business, ensuring empathy with customers and peers. IT can not rely only in high degree of technical knowledge, at the end people receives the service and evaluates value on the group to support budget and headcount. One way to help the business is to show a total effort and cost of ownership for a solution. For example, a business area has an idea to rapidly implement a SaaS solution. The business may only look at the subscription cost and not consider administration, software modification costs, integration costs, and compliance costs including documentation. So the conversation is not about telling the business "no," but educating them on the ownership of the solution and who/how/where to manage solution. In some cases, the IT organization is better suited to implement the SaaS solution with better governance discipline.
IT leaders have been tech nerds for too long, not taking interest in true customer service, innovation, business thinking and so on. Just as 'the business' sees it increasingly needs more IT to develop and innovate core products and processes and demand that IT delivers, so should IT understands what it can offer to meet that demand and even surpass it by sparking business innovations made possible by technology push and information pull. IT is transforming from a static -”built to last” back office function to a more dynamic “built to design” business solution provider. It also highlights the role of IT leadership that is not static and has to be proactive to the ever changing environment, and often in real time.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
August 26, 2015
Digital Tuning: How to Innovate Boardroom
The BoDs play the significant role in both Management Innovation and Innovation Management.
The primary role of the Director is to provide strategy oversight, setting governance principles, and making the judgment on and assurance of corporate action within a framework of practical knowledge. If they do their jobs right, the executives and management team can do their jobs in a well-orchestrated fashion as well. Innovation is one of the crucial components of the corporate strategy, which role the BoD should play in both management innovation and innovation management? Or the first step first, how to innovate Boardroom?
BoDs should participate, or even lead in the area of innovation from outliers’ viewpoint: The Board of Directors are interactive change agents that represent the organization, stockholders, and senior management. No longer are boards sitting in a room and just voting on various policies, it is one of the requirements of the Board members to participate, or even lead, in constantly suggesting areas of innovation since their vistas are likely to be wider, and also because the Board should be highly accountable for strategies for the future of the company. The first thing board members need to do, is to have or gain the experience and expertise to know with some certainty how the business of the corporation is conducted. Then the board should exercise the traditional board roles from the perspective of that knowledge. There should be expert reviews of strategy; finance; executive team selection, succession and performance; and a thorough assessment of corporate risk and opportunity. Although the major responsibility of Board is for practicing governance, though it doesn’t mean to stifle innovation, on the opposite, it means to set the principles to build the right framework for managing innovations more effectively.
The Boardroom should set the culture tone for Management Innovation as well. Management innovation means to accelerate innovation at the multitude of levels, to create the space for dialogue and debate about why it is important for their organization, developing a common understanding of it, creating the necessity and motivation for it. It also needs to align innovation strategy with key ingredients of management innovation, such as the development of an innovative culture or business eco-system, which requires grounding in values, culture, behaviors, systems and artifacts as well as collaboration with key stakeholders. So, without management innovation, companies tend to renovate rather than innovate, making innovations in other areas like culture, technology, service, etc. move very slow. The effective board brings together such tremendous set of skills and experience mix that there are bound to be board members whose ideas could feed into new value creation. The innovative input to that process is just one of the things that a board will do while seeking to become a part of the corporation's competitive advantage. Imagine how the companies could change if each Board Director felt his/her mission is to expand the value to the existing or new customers, with new ideas, new products/services; or the new structures. Innovation is one of the keys to the success of any organization. Smart companies are reaching beyond the borders of their organizations to find innovation.
The Boardroom also needs to oversight Innovation Management as well: One important role the Board must play in making sure management reports on whether and how investments in innovation are yielding forecast results. Whether it is a major IT project, launching a product, or reshaping culture, assuring excellence in predicting and tracking results falls in the domain of anyone with fiduciary responsibility. Failures may happen, opportunities may be missed, but diligence is always mandatory. The board should ask how the enterprise measures innovations and how it compares to Best in Class performance and be sure the measurements are accurate from the eyes of the customers and their constituencies. Innovation is too important to leave solely in the hands of the management team without any oversight or guidance. Some describe the chairman of the board as "the conductor of the orchestra." Obviously the chairman must be capable of running a purposeful and productive meeting, that includes attracting a cross section of excellent thought leaders and industry experts, which then should result in good governance, best practice, and strategy guidance for both innovation and operation at the journey of business transformation.
Innovation is an important component of business strategy. The board has to have a good understanding of the organization's strategic direction and its strategic alternatives. It is important for boards to take a proactive approach that set the tone for management innovation, also reviews the innovation management progress, and benchmarks on the delegated goals. The board's delegated strategic goals to the management team should be the main topic at every Board meeting, and it is important for a Board to assertively monitor progress in innovation which is usually the most important differentiator to build a successful digital master and an industrial business leader.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The primary role of the Director is to provide strategy oversight, setting governance principles, and making the judgment on and assurance of corporate action within a framework of practical knowledge. If they do their jobs right, the executives and management team can do their jobs in a well-orchestrated fashion as well. Innovation is one of the crucial components of the corporate strategy, which role the BoD should play in both management innovation and innovation management? Or the first step first, how to innovate Boardroom?
BoDs should participate, or even lead in the area of innovation from outliers’ viewpoint: The Board of Directors are interactive change agents that represent the organization, stockholders, and senior management. No longer are boards sitting in a room and just voting on various policies, it is one of the requirements of the Board members to participate, or even lead, in constantly suggesting areas of innovation since their vistas are likely to be wider, and also because the Board should be highly accountable for strategies for the future of the company. The first thing board members need to do, is to have or gain the experience and expertise to know with some certainty how the business of the corporation is conducted. Then the board should exercise the traditional board roles from the perspective of that knowledge. There should be expert reviews of strategy; finance; executive team selection, succession and performance; and a thorough assessment of corporate risk and opportunity. Although the major responsibility of Board is for practicing governance, though it doesn’t mean to stifle innovation, on the opposite, it means to set the principles to build the right framework for managing innovations more effectively.
The Boardroom should set the culture tone for Management Innovation as well. Management innovation means to accelerate innovation at the multitude of levels, to create the space for dialogue and debate about why it is important for their organization, developing a common understanding of it, creating the necessity and motivation for it. It also needs to align innovation strategy with key ingredients of management innovation, such as the development of an innovative culture or business eco-system, which requires grounding in values, culture, behaviors, systems and artifacts as well as collaboration with key stakeholders. So, without management innovation, companies tend to renovate rather than innovate, making innovations in other areas like culture, technology, service, etc. move very slow. The effective board brings together such tremendous set of skills and experience mix that there are bound to be board members whose ideas could feed into new value creation. The innovative input to that process is just one of the things that a board will do while seeking to become a part of the corporation's competitive advantage. Imagine how the companies could change if each Board Director felt his/her mission is to expand the value to the existing or new customers, with new ideas, new products/services; or the new structures. Innovation is one of the keys to the success of any organization. Smart companies are reaching beyond the borders of their organizations to find innovation.
The Boardroom also needs to oversight Innovation Management as well: One important role the Board must play in making sure management reports on whether and how investments in innovation are yielding forecast results. Whether it is a major IT project, launching a product, or reshaping culture, assuring excellence in predicting and tracking results falls in the domain of anyone with fiduciary responsibility. Failures may happen, opportunities may be missed, but diligence is always mandatory. The board should ask how the enterprise measures innovations and how it compares to Best in Class performance and be sure the measurements are accurate from the eyes of the customers and their constituencies. Innovation is too important to leave solely in the hands of the management team without any oversight or guidance. Some describe the chairman of the board as "the conductor of the orchestra." Obviously the chairman must be capable of running a purposeful and productive meeting, that includes attracting a cross section of excellent thought leaders and industry experts, which then should result in good governance, best practice, and strategy guidance for both innovation and operation at the journey of business transformation.Innovation is an important component of business strategy. The board has to have a good understanding of the organization's strategic direction and its strategic alternatives. It is important for boards to take a proactive approach that set the tone for management innovation, also reviews the innovation management progress, and benchmarks on the delegated goals. The board's delegated strategic goals to the management team should be the main topic at every Board meeting, and it is important for a Board to assertively monitor progress in innovation which is usually the most important differentiator to build a successful digital master and an industrial business leader.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
How to Breakdown Bureaucracies in Digital Transformation
We need to choose to continue to learn, grow and empower people to learn and grow too.
Digital is about changes, closer to reality is that 'change' is continuously happening in such a dynamic environment of a company. The desires of stakeholders, clients and employees are evolving naturally, not to mention that many of organizations today are facing a more radical digital transformation. What is the digital leadership all about, how to cultivate digital attitudes to break down bureaucracies in accelerating digital transformation in organizations or our society?
Digital leadership, or leadership overall, is about setting the direction. The very concept of 'leading' implies that leader and follower are trying to move somewhere, with the leader making more of a contribution to the direction of that movement. Does this also imply that the direction, the very purpose is one the followers share with the leader? But most leaders also, or often exclusively, pursue the purpose of leading -- satisfying the desire for power to give directions -- almost regardless of what that direction is. Therefore, at digital age, status quo only cannot make one a real leader, if they don’t have a purpose of leading, or lack of insight or vision upon the directions. The very purpose of leadership is to drive progression towards a common human goal.
Digital attitudes are about curiosity. Being experimental and persistent. Many senior executives are closed to the possibility that their established world-views could somehow be less right or perfect than the ones that got them to where they are now at the top. There is overwhelming practical evidence that a few underdog players in digital transformation are what make the most difference. People normally 'close' the boundaries of the system, so that less energy is transferred and, therefore, the less changes happen in the system. We all try to 'close' the system, so to say, to reduce its complexity. But the adaptive attitude is to manage its complexity via agility enhancement. The differentiator between a digital leader and a laggard is not about the title and authority, more about the mindsets and attitude: the intellectual curiosity, risk tolerance, persistence, and creativity, etc.
Dynamic and changing digital organizations cannot operate with stable, unchanging people. Mostly the management wants to see a different result of all combined efforts. So methods or people held responsible for those results 'has to change.' Most people are quite willing to put the effort in change. What they don't want is 'to be changed by others.' That calls out for resistance. So let them be part of the direction, speed and the way you are heading. Change always starts at the individual level. It is challenging, and at times frustrating to working as a 'digital pivot’ in bureaucracies whose very DNA acts as an immune system to new ideas and innovation. People must first be open to seeing and understanding that their status quo is probably anything but positives. It is only then that there is any real potential to change anything, such as processes, business models, or technology, to open some peoples' minds, or at least creating the conditions for them to do so themselves can be extremely difficult. These are clear roles and authority structure, processes, and dynamic prioritization all wrapped up in a smart and adaptive operations plan that turn out to be most critical.
We need to choose to continue to learn, grow and empower people to learn and grow too. There comes a time when we each have to hold ourselves accountable for our own actions, thoughts and belief. It is the time to break down the organizational bureaucracy and make the change going smoothly at the digital age of information-abundance, design empathy, and people-centricity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital is about changes, closer to reality is that 'change' is continuously happening in such a dynamic environment of a company. The desires of stakeholders, clients and employees are evolving naturally, not to mention that many of organizations today are facing a more radical digital transformation. What is the digital leadership all about, how to cultivate digital attitudes to break down bureaucracies in accelerating digital transformation in organizations or our society?
Digital leadership, or leadership overall, is about setting the direction. The very concept of 'leading' implies that leader and follower are trying to move somewhere, with the leader making more of a contribution to the direction of that movement. Does this also imply that the direction, the very purpose is one the followers share with the leader? But most leaders also, or often exclusively, pursue the purpose of leading -- satisfying the desire for power to give directions -- almost regardless of what that direction is. Therefore, at digital age, status quo only cannot make one a real leader, if they don’t have a purpose of leading, or lack of insight or vision upon the directions. The very purpose of leadership is to drive progression towards a common human goal.
Digital attitudes are about curiosity. Being experimental and persistent. Many senior executives are closed to the possibility that their established world-views could somehow be less right or perfect than the ones that got them to where they are now at the top. There is overwhelming practical evidence that a few underdog players in digital transformation are what make the most difference. People normally 'close' the boundaries of the system, so that less energy is transferred and, therefore, the less changes happen in the system. We all try to 'close' the system, so to say, to reduce its complexity. But the adaptive attitude is to manage its complexity via agility enhancement. The differentiator between a digital leader and a laggard is not about the title and authority, more about the mindsets and attitude: the intellectual curiosity, risk tolerance, persistence, and creativity, etc.
Dynamic and changing digital organizations cannot operate with stable, unchanging people. Mostly the management wants to see a different result of all combined efforts. So methods or people held responsible for those results 'has to change.' Most people are quite willing to put the effort in change. What they don't want is 'to be changed by others.' That calls out for resistance. So let them be part of the direction, speed and the way you are heading. Change always starts at the individual level. It is challenging, and at times frustrating to working as a 'digital pivot’ in bureaucracies whose very DNA acts as an immune system to new ideas and innovation. People must first be open to seeing and understanding that their status quo is probably anything but positives. It is only then that there is any real potential to change anything, such as processes, business models, or technology, to open some peoples' minds, or at least creating the conditions for them to do so themselves can be extremely difficult. These are clear roles and authority structure, processes, and dynamic prioritization all wrapped up in a smart and adaptive operations plan that turn out to be most critical.
We need to choose to continue to learn, grow and empower people to learn and grow too. There comes a time when we each have to hold ourselves accountable for our own actions, thoughts and belief. It is the time to break down the organizational bureaucracy and make the change going smoothly at the digital age of information-abundance, design empathy, and people-centricity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three Aspects on How to Groom a Digital CIO
Digital CIOs are business strategist and innovation evangelist, talent master, and customer champion.
Due to the abundance of information and fast changing technology trends, CIOs have so much more on their plate now than before, and in most circumstances it would be excellent for the job. It's also a role of the CIO to participate in the preparation of the company's strategies that reinforce its competencies in both digital and global vision of the business. CIO is a partner in leadership within the organization. The technologies serve the objectives of the company's business. As the Chief Information Officer of your company, the requirements of your job are vast and varied. The skills that you must employ include strategy making and execution, sharing technology vision; providing digital transformation leadership for the organization and beyond, and practicing IT management approach for your team. In short, you’re expected to be all that and a bag of chips. But how to groom such a high-effective digital CIO?
CIO’s business acumen on the rise: In order to be an effective Digital CIO, you must understand every aspect of the business. Unfortunately, too many CIOs are seen as just techies by the business side of the house, and the IT departments see CIOs as a tactical IT Managers who don't have enough hands-on business experience. It is a tough balance. People come in from outside of IT perform well as CIOs so long as their role is properly understood, so it should also work the other way around, IT ranked CIOs need to learn business and gain in-depth understanding of end customers as well. CIOs tend to have a unique overview of the organization that can only be an advantage. It is very possible to make this transition given the right skills and circumstances. After all, if you can’t see the entire painting, you’ll never know how big the frame needs to be.
High potential IT leaders need to build the full set of business skills and competitive leadership capabilities. Now more often the business is inextricably connected with technology, and the functional barriers are starting to weaken, allowing business professionals to pursue their aspirations and to apply their skills and expertise to their greatest effect. If that takes them across business functions, it would be great to break down the silo thinking, and harness cross-functional communication and collaboration. Unfortunately the majority of organizations today do not provide the potential IT leaders or managers such rotating opportunities to develop the full set of business skills and expand their career horizon. Hence, high potential IT professionals need to take the calculated risk to grow on their own, gain diverse experience, build a unique set of capability, and become “who they want to be.” They need to develop many important skills such as human resources, cross-departmental collaboration, problem-solving, innovation and even cost analysis and budgeting. Such well-rounded IT leaders will have the vision to balance the multidimensional business values such as shareholders’ value, customer value, community value, etc, they have to focus on both top line growth and bottom line short-term result.
Digital CIOs need to be equipped with intrapreneur’s mindset to focus on both top-line business growth and bottom line efficiency. If grown from a technical ladder, those CIOs will be good at bottom line growth, that's about control costs with logical thinking. But for top line growth, the intrapreneur’s mindset is important for CIOs to run IT as a business, and manage both opportunities and risks accordingly. Today, IT leaders must understand the revenue model and understand how IT supports that model and transform IT from a cost center to an innovation engine and value creator. At the end of the day, it is all about ROI, and businesses are bringing back to the businesses. These are notable steps for a visionary leader, and ensure that the overall company is on track! In fact, today's leading CIO's are running their own operations as if they are a business in their own right, balancing costs, scarce resources and recoveries to maximize the return on the IT budget.
As we know there are different types of organizations and different cycles in their maturity, equally, individuals have their own cycles, and also importantly leadership mix. Sometimes it’s less about the individual but more about how the leader fits in with the cohort and more importantly where does the organization want to go based on well-refined business strategy. Digital CIOs are business strategist and innovation evangelist, talent master, and customer champion.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Due to the abundance of information and fast changing technology trends, CIOs have so much more on their plate now than before, and in most circumstances it would be excellent for the job. It's also a role of the CIO to participate in the preparation of the company's strategies that reinforce its competencies in both digital and global vision of the business. CIO is a partner in leadership within the organization. The technologies serve the objectives of the company's business. As the Chief Information Officer of your company, the requirements of your job are vast and varied. The skills that you must employ include strategy making and execution, sharing technology vision; providing digital transformation leadership for the organization and beyond, and practicing IT management approach for your team. In short, you’re expected to be all that and a bag of chips. But how to groom such a high-effective digital CIO?
CIO’s business acumen on the rise: In order to be an effective Digital CIO, you must understand every aspect of the business. Unfortunately, too many CIOs are seen as just techies by the business side of the house, and the IT departments see CIOs as a tactical IT Managers who don't have enough hands-on business experience. It is a tough balance. People come in from outside of IT perform well as CIOs so long as their role is properly understood, so it should also work the other way around, IT ranked CIOs need to learn business and gain in-depth understanding of end customers as well. CIOs tend to have a unique overview of the organization that can only be an advantage. It is very possible to make this transition given the right skills and circumstances. After all, if you can’t see the entire painting, you’ll never know how big the frame needs to be.
High potential IT leaders need to build the full set of business skills and competitive leadership capabilities. Now more often the business is inextricably connected with technology, and the functional barriers are starting to weaken, allowing business professionals to pursue their aspirations and to apply their skills and expertise to their greatest effect. If that takes them across business functions, it would be great to break down the silo thinking, and harness cross-functional communication and collaboration. Unfortunately the majority of organizations today do not provide the potential IT leaders or managers such rotating opportunities to develop the full set of business skills and expand their career horizon. Hence, high potential IT professionals need to take the calculated risk to grow on their own, gain diverse experience, build a unique set of capability, and become “who they want to be.” They need to develop many important skills such as human resources, cross-departmental collaboration, problem-solving, innovation and even cost analysis and budgeting. Such well-rounded IT leaders will have the vision to balance the multidimensional business values such as shareholders’ value, customer value, community value, etc, they have to focus on both top line growth and bottom line short-term result.
Digital CIOs need to be equipped with intrapreneur’s mindset to focus on both top-line business growth and bottom line efficiency. If grown from a technical ladder, those CIOs will be good at bottom line growth, that's about control costs with logical thinking. But for top line growth, the intrapreneur’s mindset is important for CIOs to run IT as a business, and manage both opportunities and risks accordingly. Today, IT leaders must understand the revenue model and understand how IT supports that model and transform IT from a cost center to an innovation engine and value creator. At the end of the day, it is all about ROI, and businesses are bringing back to the businesses. These are notable steps for a visionary leader, and ensure that the overall company is on track! In fact, today's leading CIO's are running their own operations as if they are a business in their own right, balancing costs, scarce resources and recoveries to maximize the return on the IT budget.
As we know there are different types of organizations and different cycles in their maturity, equally, individuals have their own cycles, and also importantly leadership mix. Sometimes it’s less about the individual but more about how the leader fits in with the cohort and more importantly where does the organization want to go based on well-refined business strategy. Digital CIOs are business strategist and innovation evangelist, talent master, and customer champion.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
August 25, 2015
Do You Make Choices via Intuition or Deliberate Thinking?
Either intuition or intelligence, awareness is fundamental to making choices.
Perhaps the mind is one of the most complex things in the world; the mind is the interface between body and consciousness. It can be very active if we care for it. The mind can both think fast (intuition) and think slow (analytics); the mind is reasoning, calculating and creating, etc. Do you make choices more based on intuition or logic?
Whether we know it consciously or not, we are always making a choice. Still we can't control the outcome of our choices, and sometimes the events either good or bad, happen that change our life or perspective in a totally makes different direction. And if we choose to listen to our intuition, we may feel like being in the flow of life. Of course, we can never control an outcome because of numerous variables at play in our external environment which do make an impact on what we wish to achieve. More freedom with more choice is a myth. So, the choice doesn't mean freedom but instead, it is a binding on one's decision-making ability. Given no choice at all, the human mind can always come up with something that it may cherish a lot and try to get it. The mind may feel free in a real sense in looking for what it cherished most, no matter whether it succeeds in finding one or not.
Intuition is not just the emotional side of the mind; sometimes it’s an inner calling. One has to be too deeply inclined, and sensitive, to listen to this subtlest sound of silence. Is it just our belief in intuition which finally influences our mind to go by the Intuition? Or is there a concrete evidence to prove that Intuition is all about what is destined for us? As human beings, we normally go by the belief in it and hence we may not get into an investigative mood about the outcome of following our intuition. We may tend just to accept whatever happens and be happy with it. Also, Intuition does not mean one stops making conscious choices totally. Conscious Choice is when we apply our mind and "make a decision." This could be based on our intelligence, past experiences.
Awareness is fundamental to choice. Future outcomes or how events open is not in our hands. Choice with full awareness is the freedom from the conditioned circumstances. The more conscious we grow, the more aligned we become with our intuition. Guidance comes from within, but, very rarely would anyone depend on intuition or listen to the inner calling. It requires a lot of courage. Some courageous leaders choose to follow their intuition and taste success, not because they are emotional, but because they let the inner feeling flow, also apply the awareness and intelligence to make better choices, but not any choice.
Both intuitive and deliberate thinking have their places to make the right choice, intuition helps you make choices by discovering “who you are” and “what shall you do or choose” naturally, but deliberate thinking will allow you to verify or structure the multi-choices you can make intellectually, and mind is just used as a tool to pick the provided options at the right time and at the right place to make the free, but more importantly the optimal choice consciously or even superconsciously.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Perhaps the mind is one of the most complex things in the world; the mind is the interface between body and consciousness. It can be very active if we care for it. The mind can both think fast (intuition) and think slow (analytics); the mind is reasoning, calculating and creating, etc. Do you make choices more based on intuition or logic?
Whether we know it consciously or not, we are always making a choice. Still we can't control the outcome of our choices, and sometimes the events either good or bad, happen that change our life or perspective in a totally makes different direction. And if we choose to listen to our intuition, we may feel like being in the flow of life. Of course, we can never control an outcome because of numerous variables at play in our external environment which do make an impact on what we wish to achieve. More freedom with more choice is a myth. So, the choice doesn't mean freedom but instead, it is a binding on one's decision-making ability. Given no choice at all, the human mind can always come up with something that it may cherish a lot and try to get it. The mind may feel free in a real sense in looking for what it cherished most, no matter whether it succeeds in finding one or not.
Intuition is not just the emotional side of the mind; sometimes it’s an inner calling. One has to be too deeply inclined, and sensitive, to listen to this subtlest sound of silence. Is it just our belief in intuition which finally influences our mind to go by the Intuition? Or is there a concrete evidence to prove that Intuition is all about what is destined for us? As human beings, we normally go by the belief in it and hence we may not get into an investigative mood about the outcome of following our intuition. We may tend just to accept whatever happens and be happy with it. Also, Intuition does not mean one stops making conscious choices totally. Conscious Choice is when we apply our mind and "make a decision." This could be based on our intelligence, past experiences.
Awareness is fundamental to choice. Future outcomes or how events open is not in our hands. Choice with full awareness is the freedom from the conditioned circumstances. The more conscious we grow, the more aligned we become with our intuition. Guidance comes from within, but, very rarely would anyone depend on intuition or listen to the inner calling. It requires a lot of courage. Some courageous leaders choose to follow their intuition and taste success, not because they are emotional, but because they let the inner feeling flow, also apply the awareness and intelligence to make better choices, but not any choice.Both intuitive and deliberate thinking have their places to make the right choice, intuition helps you make choices by discovering “who you are” and “what shall you do or choose” naturally, but deliberate thinking will allow you to verify or structure the multi-choices you can make intellectually, and mind is just used as a tool to pick the provided options at the right time and at the right place to make the free, but more importantly the optimal choice consciously or even superconsciously.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
CIOs as An Agility Leader: Is Agile a Choice or Necessity in your Organization?
By "believe in agile," you need to have in-depth understand of its values and 12 principles in the software agile manifesto.
Agile is more as a philosophy than a methodology. It is impossible to do anything, to carry out any human action, without constant observation of your environment, and constantly modifying your behaviour to accommodate your current circumstances, while at the same time behaving in an orderly fashion and moving towards your ultimate goal. This is agile behavior, which is a natural, normal and usual way to behave, regardless of what it is you are trying to achieve. Even the short distance trip demands an element of preparation and planning, with empiricism, collaboration and behavior adjustment as required. More specifically, what is the beauty of Agile, what does it imply by “believe in agile”? And Is Agile a choice or necessity in your organization?
By "believe in agile," you need to have in-depth understand of its values and 12 principles in the software agile manifesto. Intrinsically you look at things in an empirical way and are prepared to deal with things like changes, uncertainty, ambiguity, complexity. The two hardest parts are not rushing the maturity of your team and to have the wisdom to choose what works for your team without making Agile become a religious or turf war. Agile may not be a silver bullet, but it is certainly effective. Turf wars are hard to avoid with implementing this way, because there are those who are so "siloed," they will go against what is best for the team in order to make sure they have their piece of the power or decision-making process. As such, they pick and choose the parts from different agile approaches to implementing, but sometimes with ignorance of the principles behind it or missing the big picture.
Agile is not a choice, but a necessity. Dealing with increasing complexity of business processes, and the high level of dependencies that distributed services has brought, it is almost impossible to plan ahead completely. Stakeholders get nervous when the project does not deliver to their plan. At that point they return to what they know, reestimate on the product nobody quite fully understand, bargain down buffers because history never repeat itself, or does it? Replan delivery on that basis and everybody feels better til next time. The important question is whether most organizations are even capable of letting go. Moving to agile at the organizational level involves non-trivial changes to the core structure of the organization, empowering the team means getting rid of command and control management, giving teams control of their own budget, etc; and focus on more value-focused planning.
The beauty of Agile, is the feedback during the process, and deal with change requirement on the fly. Agile is not a silver bullet for all software development problems in the world. It is designed to address some shortcomings of Waterfall methodologies, and it works well. It is based on communication - and that works if you have on-going access to customer feedback. That is when you can truly be agile. Agile is a principle to adapt to changes. It handles change requirements at the mid route, or at least, this is the beauty and practicality of Agile and its name indicates. But without the feedback from end users or stakeholders, at least, you have no impetus for change during the process, and it might be waterfall as well. The beauty of Agile, is the feedback during the process early, so that you can truly meet requirements, and you can adjust as necessary to market, customer, whatever vagaries or new inputs and feedback on what you understood as requirements. You can decide to make the changes or not.
So. let's harness our natural proclivities, develop a culture of creativity, comprehend the realities of uncertainty, and keep a constant eye on prevailing circumstances. Agility is a mindset and philosophy that you can apply very easily and seamlessly to many things, not just software development. Therefore, an agile shift is scaling up at organizational level as a set of principles to run a high-performing and high-mature digital organization.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Agile is more as a philosophy than a methodology. It is impossible to do anything, to carry out any human action, without constant observation of your environment, and constantly modifying your behaviour to accommodate your current circumstances, while at the same time behaving in an orderly fashion and moving towards your ultimate goal. This is agile behavior, which is a natural, normal and usual way to behave, regardless of what it is you are trying to achieve. Even the short distance trip demands an element of preparation and planning, with empiricism, collaboration and behavior adjustment as required. More specifically, what is the beauty of Agile, what does it imply by “believe in agile”? And Is Agile a choice or necessity in your organization?
By "believe in agile," you need to have in-depth understand of its values and 12 principles in the software agile manifesto. Intrinsically you look at things in an empirical way and are prepared to deal with things like changes, uncertainty, ambiguity, complexity. The two hardest parts are not rushing the maturity of your team and to have the wisdom to choose what works for your team without making Agile become a religious or turf war. Agile may not be a silver bullet, but it is certainly effective. Turf wars are hard to avoid with implementing this way, because there are those who are so "siloed," they will go against what is best for the team in order to make sure they have their piece of the power or decision-making process. As such, they pick and choose the parts from different agile approaches to implementing, but sometimes with ignorance of the principles behind it or missing the big picture.
Agile is not a choice, but a necessity. Dealing with increasing complexity of business processes, and the high level of dependencies that distributed services has brought, it is almost impossible to plan ahead completely. Stakeholders get nervous when the project does not deliver to their plan. At that point they return to what they know, reestimate on the product nobody quite fully understand, bargain down buffers because history never repeat itself, or does it? Replan delivery on that basis and everybody feels better til next time. The important question is whether most organizations are even capable of letting go. Moving to agile at the organizational level involves non-trivial changes to the core structure of the organization, empowering the team means getting rid of command and control management, giving teams control of their own budget, etc; and focus on more value-focused planning.
The beauty of Agile, is the feedback during the process, and deal with change requirement on the fly. Agile is not a silver bullet for all software development problems in the world. It is designed to address some shortcomings of Waterfall methodologies, and it works well. It is based on communication - and that works if you have on-going access to customer feedback. That is when you can truly be agile. Agile is a principle to adapt to changes. It handles change requirements at the mid route, or at least, this is the beauty and practicality of Agile and its name indicates. But without the feedback from end users or stakeholders, at least, you have no impetus for change during the process, and it might be waterfall as well. The beauty of Agile, is the feedback during the process early, so that you can truly meet requirements, and you can adjust as necessary to market, customer, whatever vagaries or new inputs and feedback on what you understood as requirements. You can decide to make the changes or not.
So. let's harness our natural proclivities, develop a culture of creativity, comprehend the realities of uncertainty, and keep a constant eye on prevailing circumstances. Agility is a mindset and philosophy that you can apply very easily and seamlessly to many things, not just software development. Therefore, an agile shift is scaling up at organizational level as a set of principles to run a high-performing and high-mature digital organization.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Strategy-Execution as an Ongoing Continuum
Strategic planning = Crafting strategy + Implementation + Accountable execution.
Strategy is about what you intend to do or accomplish in terms of managing the constraints to having the critical success factors in place to achieve the set of strategic priorities; and implementation is about how effective the strategy beyond technology achieves its defined goals. With the increasing speed of changes and continuous digital disruptions which are often caused by technologies, how frequently an organization should change its implementation plan to meet the desired strategic outcomes. Does it become difficult to secure the buy-in of stakeholders, if the implementation plans are changed too frequently? Are strategy-execution linear steps or an ongoing continuum?
Strategy design is pointless without execution or implementation. Similarly, Execution without a strategy is expensive and pretty ineffective. So the two are equal partners, and there shouldn’t have any gaps. The strategy is continually developed, measured, adjusted, and executed, it needs to be considered a living document which should be regularly reviewed against business objectives, market changes, and technology advancements. If this is not done, you risk implementing something just to find that the benefits have disappeared. To implement the strategy, you need to understand from where you are "coming" from and to know where you need to go. To achieve this one must understand the "environment." In this way the organization remains relevant to its customers and employees and there is no gap between design and implementation. This is not to say that the strategy is continually changed, that would make it tactical. The long-term objectives are fairly constant, unless there is a seismic market or regulatory shift, which sometimes happens! It is the journey that is adjusted through the redefinition, prioritization, and control of the strategic initiatives. To avoid a dilemma of which comes first ("keep the business running" or strategic transformation), there needs to be a decision of what is most important: whether the investment in the organization is directed at certain goals (disruptors, institutions, suppliers) or instead whether the investment in a goal supersedes the organization (pivots, partnerships, holding companies or more). Not knowing which one is more important is a recipe for driving the organization into solving the wrong problem -- which is the simplest way to say that they are cultivating a strategic gap instead of an alignment.
Strategy-Execution is an ongoing continuum with iterative steps. Charting a course to how one achieves the strategic goals with intermediate objectives over time is pivotal to success. In the strategy making process, one must also assess the environment, competitions, and other threats and opportunities and devise contingencies, that's why leaders spend more time on making strategic decisions; while the middle managers and employees often make tactical and operational decisions, but they must be informed of the strategy. The tactical decisions, if informed, are not reactive in nature. Instead, they are proactive and continue the organizational progress on the roadmap to the company’s strategic objectives. Insights are transformed into strategic initiatives and the assessment of strategy execution in a systematic way will significantly increase the success rate. If you don't continue to assess, especially those planning assumptions to verify fact or false, then your plan will be overcome by events - a result of incomplete planning. Plans only survive until the first instance comes where you have to deviate. It's at those moments where you've taken the time to identify the contingencies; where you can seize the initiative or competitive advantage and, in the long run, achieve the strategic goals you've identified. Executing the plan means employees are aware of the strategy and their roles. They can then go through day to day work acting on it and making decisions based on changing conditions rather than reacting. All this must be in the context of the strategy. The key is establishing intermediate goals for the team to work towards and having key indicators of success to assess along the way. Winston Churchill said, "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." And, clarity of the strategic value and leaders' commitment must be clearly and completely communicated for an engagement of all stakeholders.
One of the most practical ways to deal with the gap between strategy and execution is to practice portfolio management. The strategic portfolio planning needs to ensure that the most relevant projects get delivered and, therefore, more strategic objectives are realized. In most firms, the Portfolio Management process involves the Strategic Planners, the delivery managers, and the key stakeholders, they quarterly review of all of the change initiatives. They may release new initiatives, reprioritize in-flight projects, and halt projects which no longer make sense when balanced against the latest view of the strategic plan, or changes in the market, or alterations in the regulatory environment. So the prioritization and flexibility in budgeting planning or resource management is crucial to improving the success rate of strategy implementation, and for executives to execute strategy implementation using portfolio management, they need to appreciate the need for knowledge of project or program or portfolio management. Strategy implementation can be more effective if the use of project management skills is put in use, where these skills allow proper planning of implementation tasks at the Strategy design stage. Meanwhile, ROI is still the goal of any strategy, and people manage ROI with portfolios and analytics. ROI is not necessarily about dollars; it's about prioritized benefits.
Every company is unique as a "system." You have to listen to the system data from the outside in and top down - this helps identify root causes to negative complexity (entropy) with the objective of driving simplicity, so corporations become agiler to achieve the goals. Sometimes you need to be flexible when implementing the strategy as well. There are logical steps to follow in strategy execution, they are not linear steps, but a dynamic continuum. It often starts with the end in mind - the Vision. Creating the strategy, aligning all your companies’ assets toward common objectives and the end state is the first step. The next step is defining intermediate goals that work towards achieving those objectives. Working backward from the end state, taking each objective or goal and breaking it down into incremental and achievable short, mid, and long-term goals, is important to the strategy implementation. Strategic agility should be the very characteristic- where strategy and execution are considered an ongoing and iterative process of market validation tests and pragmatic, step-wise implementation. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Strategy is about what you intend to do or accomplish in terms of managing the constraints to having the critical success factors in place to achieve the set of strategic priorities; and implementation is about how effective the strategy beyond technology achieves its defined goals. With the increasing speed of changes and continuous digital disruptions which are often caused by technologies, how frequently an organization should change its implementation plan to meet the desired strategic outcomes. Does it become difficult to secure the buy-in of stakeholders, if the implementation plans are changed too frequently? Are strategy-execution linear steps or an ongoing continuum?
Strategy design is pointless without execution or implementation. Similarly, Execution without a strategy is expensive and pretty ineffective. So the two are equal partners, and there shouldn’t have any gaps. The strategy is continually developed, measured, adjusted, and executed, it needs to be considered a living document which should be regularly reviewed against business objectives, market changes, and technology advancements. If this is not done, you risk implementing something just to find that the benefits have disappeared. To implement the strategy, you need to understand from where you are "coming" from and to know where you need to go. To achieve this one must understand the "environment." In this way the organization remains relevant to its customers and employees and there is no gap between design and implementation. This is not to say that the strategy is continually changed, that would make it tactical. The long-term objectives are fairly constant, unless there is a seismic market or regulatory shift, which sometimes happens! It is the journey that is adjusted through the redefinition, prioritization, and control of the strategic initiatives. To avoid a dilemma of which comes first ("keep the business running" or strategic transformation), there needs to be a decision of what is most important: whether the investment in the organization is directed at certain goals (disruptors, institutions, suppliers) or instead whether the investment in a goal supersedes the organization (pivots, partnerships, holding companies or more). Not knowing which one is more important is a recipe for driving the organization into solving the wrong problem -- which is the simplest way to say that they are cultivating a strategic gap instead of an alignment.
Strategy-Execution is an ongoing continuum with iterative steps. Charting a course to how one achieves the strategic goals with intermediate objectives over time is pivotal to success. In the strategy making process, one must also assess the environment, competitions, and other threats and opportunities and devise contingencies, that's why leaders spend more time on making strategic decisions; while the middle managers and employees often make tactical and operational decisions, but they must be informed of the strategy. The tactical decisions, if informed, are not reactive in nature. Instead, they are proactive and continue the organizational progress on the roadmap to the company’s strategic objectives. Insights are transformed into strategic initiatives and the assessment of strategy execution in a systematic way will significantly increase the success rate. If you don't continue to assess, especially those planning assumptions to verify fact or false, then your plan will be overcome by events - a result of incomplete planning. Plans only survive until the first instance comes where you have to deviate. It's at those moments where you've taken the time to identify the contingencies; where you can seize the initiative or competitive advantage and, in the long run, achieve the strategic goals you've identified. Executing the plan means employees are aware of the strategy and their roles. They can then go through day to day work acting on it and making decisions based on changing conditions rather than reacting. All this must be in the context of the strategy. The key is establishing intermediate goals for the team to work towards and having key indicators of success to assess along the way. Winston Churchill said, "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." And, clarity of the strategic value and leaders' commitment must be clearly and completely communicated for an engagement of all stakeholders.
One of the most practical ways to deal with the gap between strategy and execution is to practice portfolio management. The strategic portfolio planning needs to ensure that the most relevant projects get delivered and, therefore, more strategic objectives are realized. In most firms, the Portfolio Management process involves the Strategic Planners, the delivery managers, and the key stakeholders, they quarterly review of all of the change initiatives. They may release new initiatives, reprioritize in-flight projects, and halt projects which no longer make sense when balanced against the latest view of the strategic plan, or changes in the market, or alterations in the regulatory environment. So the prioritization and flexibility in budgeting planning or resource management is crucial to improving the success rate of strategy implementation, and for executives to execute strategy implementation using portfolio management, they need to appreciate the need for knowledge of project or program or portfolio management. Strategy implementation can be more effective if the use of project management skills is put in use, where these skills allow proper planning of implementation tasks at the Strategy design stage. Meanwhile, ROI is still the goal of any strategy, and people manage ROI with portfolios and analytics. ROI is not necessarily about dollars; it's about prioritized benefits.
Every company is unique as a "system." You have to listen to the system data from the outside in and top down - this helps identify root causes to negative complexity (entropy) with the objective of driving simplicity, so corporations become agiler to achieve the goals. Sometimes you need to be flexible when implementing the strategy as well. There are logical steps to follow in strategy execution, they are not linear steps, but a dynamic continuum. It often starts with the end in mind - the Vision. Creating the strategy, aligning all your companies’ assets toward common objectives and the end state is the first step. The next step is defining intermediate goals that work towards achieving those objectives. Working backward from the end state, taking each objective or goal and breaking it down into incremental and achievable short, mid, and long-term goals, is important to the strategy implementation. Strategic agility should be the very characteristic- where strategy and execution are considered an ongoing and iterative process of market validation tests and pragmatic, step-wise implementation. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
August 24, 2015
Can Emotions be Stimulated by a Machine
Emotion is a type of intelligence, and intelligence is multidimensional, and subjective as well.
Neuroscientists still discuss what emotions really are or what we can use as a suitable definition. They should not be regarded as mysterious or magical only, and the scientific approach will help understand emotions as a type of intelligence, which can be simulated at a certain way. A great deal of human cognition is influenced by emotions. In order to simulate this cognition in a computer, the goal of strong Artificial Intelligence, the influence that emotions have on cognition has to be taken into consideration.
What is emotion: It is a signal sent to Processing Unit (Brain) for some action done to our sensors (Body<Touch>, Nose<Smell>, Eye<Visual/Irritation> etc, so that Processing Unit (Brain) responds to that stimulus, how it responds are the decision made by Processing Unit internally and activating appropriate sensors through one of outputs. An 'emotion' is evidenced by behavior patterns. It is the pattern that is observable. The pattern can be simulated by a skilled actor/actress. In principle, it can be simulated by a machine; in practice, it’s a long way to go.
There are studies show that emotions play an important role in memory formation. We cannot remember everything and emotions help sort out what is important for us to remember. Some of these processes happen while we are sleeping and dreaming. Although emotion is complicated, you like to imagine that it's something super magical and mysterious, but you can discover some patterns in it, at least once you get the ability to have a single dimension or perspective in mind. For example, hunger can be described as the goal to replenish energy stores. Fear can be described as a goal which also allows one to override energy-expenditure constraints. Anger as the goal to defend. Love as the goal to nourish. Empathy is the ability to be aware of a second person perspective, current state and goals in addition to one's own current state and goals.
Emotions are just another category of intelligence. For example, targeting modeling empathy could be more useful: You could try training your AI to spot non-verbal communication. You could try implementing a user transactional analysis to try to help understand and respond appropriately to conversations. You could use simulation to consider alternative conversational responses and their possible effects on a target conversational outcome. To a certain degree, an AI will be able to deal with EI or EQ. Not just deal with it, it can even manipulate some emotions to achieve certain outcomes.
Emotion is a type of intelligence, and intelligence is multidimensional, and subjective as well: Mankind likes to say that a machine or agent is intelligent when they conclude that it acts intelligently and most of all similar to human’s 'intelligent' behaviour. Will machine have both high IQ and high EQ, it takes time to see.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Neuroscientists still discuss what emotions really are or what we can use as a suitable definition. They should not be regarded as mysterious or magical only, and the scientific approach will help understand emotions as a type of intelligence, which can be simulated at a certain way. A great deal of human cognition is influenced by emotions. In order to simulate this cognition in a computer, the goal of strong Artificial Intelligence, the influence that emotions have on cognition has to be taken into consideration.
What is emotion: It is a signal sent to Processing Unit (Brain) for some action done to our sensors (Body<Touch>, Nose<Smell>, Eye<Visual/Irritation> etc, so that Processing Unit (Brain) responds to that stimulus, how it responds are the decision made by Processing Unit internally and activating appropriate sensors through one of outputs. An 'emotion' is evidenced by behavior patterns. It is the pattern that is observable. The pattern can be simulated by a skilled actor/actress. In principle, it can be simulated by a machine; in practice, it’s a long way to go.
There are studies show that emotions play an important role in memory formation. We cannot remember everything and emotions help sort out what is important for us to remember. Some of these processes happen while we are sleeping and dreaming. Although emotion is complicated, you like to imagine that it's something super magical and mysterious, but you can discover some patterns in it, at least once you get the ability to have a single dimension or perspective in mind. For example, hunger can be described as the goal to replenish energy stores. Fear can be described as a goal which also allows one to override energy-expenditure constraints. Anger as the goal to defend. Love as the goal to nourish. Empathy is the ability to be aware of a second person perspective, current state and goals in addition to one's own current state and goals.
Emotions are just another category of intelligence. For example, targeting modeling empathy could be more useful: You could try training your AI to spot non-verbal communication. You could try implementing a user transactional analysis to try to help understand and respond appropriately to conversations. You could use simulation to consider alternative conversational responses and their possible effects on a target conversational outcome. To a certain degree, an AI will be able to deal with EI or EQ. Not just deal with it, it can even manipulate some emotions to achieve certain outcomes.
Emotion is a type of intelligence, and intelligence is multidimensional, and subjective as well: Mankind likes to say that a machine or agent is intelligent when they conclude that it acts intelligently and most of all similar to human’s 'intelligent' behaviour. Will machine have both high IQ and high EQ, it takes time to see.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
