Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1417
August 2, 2015
How to Engage Top Management in Performance Management
It is difficult to have a highly competitive organization without highly competitive talent.
Performance Management is a significant management disciplines in business system. It’s the management practice that does not have hardcoded programming like other business systems, but directly drives corporate mindset, attitude and behavior. What are success factors in Performance Management, how to engage top management in Performance Management, and can you build an effective framework of processes and guidelines dealing with dynamic, fluid, unpredictable pool of corporate mentality and behaviors?
Fundamental to culture change, a large subject in itself, is the need for Performance Management: Every organization has its own unique set of collective thinking and behaviors, some are reluctant to change, and others are open to change. It is supported by senior management to drive the culture in the right direction - and move the strategy of the business forward. In many cases, the senior managers are afraid of the change because historically there were no solid roots for adopting new ideas. A quote often seen of late is that,"Culture trumps strategy." this is where HR may need to start in the education of corporate management. Even with great capable people, if the culture is not right - even the best laid plans will go very slowly and possibly stall. The spirit of an organization comes from the top. The top team has significant influence for implementing performance management into practice in the right way. They are serving as role model for other managers in the organization. If the top team does performance management thoroughly then the rest levels of managers do it thoroughly as well. Bottom line, every organization has a certain culture and to succeed in any endeavor, we need to understand the culture and the drivers behind any action, to understand the culture, HR professionals need to explore the implicit cultural traits (the hidden beliefs that are difficult to know and takes time to uncover), this also takes a lot of time and effort but the results are tremendous, you will achieve your goals regardless of the difficulties. A quick practical approach is to get buy-in from top team that if they want the business results and outcomes, then performance management is a key system that runs alongside the business processes.
Let data and analytics speak. The prime understanding required is the SWOT of the management team. This is essential because the same would be reflected in the entire organization, in the people system and its function. Also the Strength - Weakness analysis of the members and whether they truly function as a team. As we all know, executive management always responds to "data;" Senior management usual focus is on numbers or revenues, can your Performance Management create or contribute towards more revenues?Actually, there is an expectation of all levels of leadership, entry, mid- and executive, to critique or at least be aware of how data (S.W.O.T. analyze) affects an organization. Consequently, the most effective way in confirming senior management's buy-in is to show how the data, directly and indirectly, affects productivity, performance and profitability. Decisions that affect the lives of people, and the vitality of an organization, should be executed on the heels of history and data.
The best way to engage Top Managers is to apply a suitable Performance Management framework. A suitable PM framework for the organization (not one size fits all) combined with a culture and an attitude that truly values the delivery of performance feedback whenever and wherever it is needed will win out. A suitable Performance Management framework delivers the results they need, in a demonstrable or measurable way, and ideally strategical. Top managers are not interested in a time consuming process that records history; everyone wants recognition, but isn't PM supposed to enable achievement? Top managers must influence their organizational culture and management attitude via leading by example - and it's HR’s job to help them by challenging them to decide what it is that they want from it; and manage it in more integral way.
Performance enhancement through delegation, decentralization and empowerment: Performance Management should not be confined at the top but to all levels, at strategic areas where performance management can give desired results for the business, how to manage performance parameters so that desired results are achieved. In many situations, the managers need full autonomy to complete the programs and projects. It is possible only when they are empowered and delegated to take needed decisions. Otherwise bureaucrats take advantage and the projects are unfinished. Many line managers were obstructed due to improper goals. There is a need for monitoring, evaluating and giving the right feedback for the people on the job. This also need for right leaders. It is useless to come up with a strategic business plan if the people component is not considered. Some people think that with the plan, the people component will just take care of itself. Or they are relying on HR to include programs that will support the plan. In any case, top management has to ensure that the people component is considered so that all facets of performance is covered especially since implementation of the plan will be done by people. -Aligning the PMS with the overall organisation strategy, mission and objective and how-Adapting to a proactive fair PMS can contribute towards the leadership strategy.-Training and coaching to senior management that highlight the importance of having a-Fair system contributing towards a motivated workforce leading to more productivity and revenues.
Performance - Commitment - Results. And these require management support. Having a logical flow of thinking from strategic business direction to operational planning is important, but all these have to be supported by other programs like facilities planning, market development, etc. in the business area and performance and competency development in the people area. The blessing that came through business strategy planning was the clearer direction of competency development and a clearer basis for evaluating performance. These are important pillars of performance management. Instead of simply saying that an assigned work was completed successfully, but giving time for evaluating how the work was achieved in terms of planning, use of available resources, clarity of direction, how teamwork was achieved (not only within a project but in using the knowledge/experience of other people), how the manager and the person involved worked in synergy, etc. From a business perspective, performance management, when employed as a way of maximizing results through competence, using cooperative effort rather than relying on fully self-generated effort in an open atmosphere of communication among people including staff with managers, can have deeper and longer impact on organizational performance. The usual incentive programs don't really give much push toward improving performance, but when a program digs deep into individual desire for self-improvement and each one has the opportunity/capability to improve performance with the help of management, then the program can fly.
Performance Management needs to be well integrated with talent management and culture management, and it should focus on improving future performance and talent development as well. What you can show management is how you are moving the organization toward excellence by using PM to get people who are interested in improving doing just that or those that are not - being separated. You can use PM to challenge with stretch goals the performances and behaviors if they are met consistently - you are providing no comfortable resting places. It is difficult to have a highly competitive organization without highly competitive talent.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Performance Management is a significant management disciplines in business system. It’s the management practice that does not have hardcoded programming like other business systems, but directly drives corporate mindset, attitude and behavior. What are success factors in Performance Management, how to engage top management in Performance Management, and can you build an effective framework of processes and guidelines dealing with dynamic, fluid, unpredictable pool of corporate mentality and behaviors?
Fundamental to culture change, a large subject in itself, is the need for Performance Management: Every organization has its own unique set of collective thinking and behaviors, some are reluctant to change, and others are open to change. It is supported by senior management to drive the culture in the right direction - and move the strategy of the business forward. In many cases, the senior managers are afraid of the change because historically there were no solid roots for adopting new ideas. A quote often seen of late is that,"Culture trumps strategy." this is where HR may need to start in the education of corporate management. Even with great capable people, if the culture is not right - even the best laid plans will go very slowly and possibly stall. The spirit of an organization comes from the top. The top team has significant influence for implementing performance management into practice in the right way. They are serving as role model for other managers in the organization. If the top team does performance management thoroughly then the rest levels of managers do it thoroughly as well. Bottom line, every organization has a certain culture and to succeed in any endeavor, we need to understand the culture and the drivers behind any action, to understand the culture, HR professionals need to explore the implicit cultural traits (the hidden beliefs that are difficult to know and takes time to uncover), this also takes a lot of time and effort but the results are tremendous, you will achieve your goals regardless of the difficulties. A quick practical approach is to get buy-in from top team that if they want the business results and outcomes, then performance management is a key system that runs alongside the business processes.
Let data and analytics speak. The prime understanding required is the SWOT of the management team. This is essential because the same would be reflected in the entire organization, in the people system and its function. Also the Strength - Weakness analysis of the members and whether they truly function as a team. As we all know, executive management always responds to "data;" Senior management usual focus is on numbers or revenues, can your Performance Management create or contribute towards more revenues?Actually, there is an expectation of all levels of leadership, entry, mid- and executive, to critique or at least be aware of how data (S.W.O.T. analyze) affects an organization. Consequently, the most effective way in confirming senior management's buy-in is to show how the data, directly and indirectly, affects productivity, performance and profitability. Decisions that affect the lives of people, and the vitality of an organization, should be executed on the heels of history and data.
The best way to engage Top Managers is to apply a suitable Performance Management framework. A suitable PM framework for the organization (not one size fits all) combined with a culture and an attitude that truly values the delivery of performance feedback whenever and wherever it is needed will win out. A suitable Performance Management framework delivers the results they need, in a demonstrable or measurable way, and ideally strategical. Top managers are not interested in a time consuming process that records history; everyone wants recognition, but isn't PM supposed to enable achievement? Top managers must influence their organizational culture and management attitude via leading by example - and it's HR’s job to help them by challenging them to decide what it is that they want from it; and manage it in more integral way.
Performance enhancement through delegation, decentralization and empowerment: Performance Management should not be confined at the top but to all levels, at strategic areas where performance management can give desired results for the business, how to manage performance parameters so that desired results are achieved. In many situations, the managers need full autonomy to complete the programs and projects. It is possible only when they are empowered and delegated to take needed decisions. Otherwise bureaucrats take advantage and the projects are unfinished. Many line managers were obstructed due to improper goals. There is a need for monitoring, evaluating and giving the right feedback for the people on the job. This also need for right leaders. It is useless to come up with a strategic business plan if the people component is not considered. Some people think that with the plan, the people component will just take care of itself. Or they are relying on HR to include programs that will support the plan. In any case, top management has to ensure that the people component is considered so that all facets of performance is covered especially since implementation of the plan will be done by people. -Aligning the PMS with the overall organisation strategy, mission and objective and how-Adapting to a proactive fair PMS can contribute towards the leadership strategy.-Training and coaching to senior management that highlight the importance of having a-Fair system contributing towards a motivated workforce leading to more productivity and revenues.
Performance - Commitment - Results. And these require management support. Having a logical flow of thinking from strategic business direction to operational planning is important, but all these have to be supported by other programs like facilities planning, market development, etc. in the business area and performance and competency development in the people area. The blessing that came through business strategy planning was the clearer direction of competency development and a clearer basis for evaluating performance. These are important pillars of performance management. Instead of simply saying that an assigned work was completed successfully, but giving time for evaluating how the work was achieved in terms of planning, use of available resources, clarity of direction, how teamwork was achieved (not only within a project but in using the knowledge/experience of other people), how the manager and the person involved worked in synergy, etc. From a business perspective, performance management, when employed as a way of maximizing results through competence, using cooperative effort rather than relying on fully self-generated effort in an open atmosphere of communication among people including staff with managers, can have deeper and longer impact on organizational performance. The usual incentive programs don't really give much push toward improving performance, but when a program digs deep into individual desire for self-improvement and each one has the opportunity/capability to improve performance with the help of management, then the program can fly.
Performance Management needs to be well integrated with talent management and culture management, and it should focus on improving future performance and talent development as well. What you can show management is how you are moving the organization toward excellence by using PM to get people who are interested in improving doing just that or those that are not - being separated. You can use PM to challenge with stretch goals the performances and behaviors if they are met consistently - you are providing no comfortable resting places. It is difficult to have a highly competitive organization without highly competitive talent.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Agile vs. DevOps
Agile is a big umbrella term refers to the mindset, philosophy and set of principles to run business or manage projects, and convering the comprehensive methodologies like XP, and lightweight management frameworks like Scrum. DevOps, is a deployment pipeline that stresses communication, collaboration and integration between software developers and information Technology (IT) professionals.
Both Agile and DevOps are for integration, interaction and innovation. Devops is the natural result of organizations taking agility past their development processes to encompass the entire software life cycle, including deployment and maintenance. So in the same way Agile teams break the silos between Quality Engineers and software developer, instead of the development organization throwing finished software over the fence to the operation organization, everyone retains a stake in the overall cycle. Developers work on the deployment and monitoring tools, hardware engineers are part of the original design team, etc.
Both Agile and DevOps are customer-centric: Agile advocates bringing the voice of the customer right into the team in order to tear down that wall in the value stream and open up a dialog with the customer, to allow greater transfer of ideas, both ways. In the same way, DevOps breaks the invisible wall between development and operations, to open up a dialog, and optimize the whole process in ways that perhaps were not possible before. To sum up, agile involves the customer in the development process to lower the risk. Devops involves operation and test to streamline the test and deployment of the software, thus further involving the customer and potentially lowering the risk even more.
DevOps and agile are complementary to each other. DevOps can eliminate the waste incurred by "Definition of Done." Software is never really "done." Even after it goes live, it needs to run smoothly, and to ensure that, there is a continuous stream of work. DevOps brings the culture of end-to-end software engineering processes under one umbrella and tried to address existing silos and challenges: a) with iterative development and frequent production releases of product increments, the bottlenecks to push that releases in production by operations team at same pace and frequency still existed thereby limiting the full potential of being Agile b) often there were risk and uncertainty associated with production releases due to differential environments b) the contribution from operations team and their expertise to product development and environment provisioning were underutilized until the late till production release thereby facing multiple challenges. There are other such numerous reasons which have been addressed through DevOps culture through improved communication and collaboration with operations team during the entire software engineering processes. Now the term 'DevTestOps' is picking up, which advocates and emphasis more and more automation testing and involvement of Development, Testing and Operations team all working together from day one of the project.
Many organizations actually struggle with a waterfall of "Strategy - Agile - Operations," while others have simply made Operations a "stakeholder" of Scrum teams who need to get in line with feature development, sprint timeboxes and Product Planning. Essentially DevOps is a solution set for getting software into production. Agile (the mindset) on the other hand embodies the strategy to be flexible, fast and adaptable to changes. Scrum (methodology commonly confused with "Agile") is a lightweight framework for how to do software development agile.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
What’s the Purpose of Designed Systems
Human has purposes, organizations have purposes, and human society as a whole has collective purpose as well. What is the purpose? Does cause effect analysis define purpose? According to dictionary, purpose is:- the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc.- an intended or desired result; end; aim; goal.- determination; resoluteness.- the subject in hand; the point at issue.-practical result, effect, or advantage: to act to good purpose.
The purpose of designed systems are to provide processes that enable specific outputs; that will meet specific needs. This is accomplished by developing the high-level requirements (main purposes or system requirements), and decomposing to lower-level requirements or subsystem requirements that define processes, in order to generate stated outputs under specific life cycle conditions; consequently, resulting from specific inputs, processes, and outputs. So purpose itself is a multidimensional system. It has the same properties as any other system. -It has emergent properties that help us deal with future possibilities-It has outcome properties which helps us get things done by relying on our past experience-It has relational properties that help us resolve the tensions between future possibilities and past experience.
Any purpose that a system has is defined by the observer looking that system, man-made or natural. Systems are merely descriptions of what an observer notices and includes in their defined boundary of interactions. These descriptions of course are highly useful, but they are still only descriptions and not entities. This is why cause-effect is tricky, because there are multitudes of causes and multitudes of effects which only become apparent as the observer changes how they describe the system (organizations, structures, elements, environments, etc). If using cause and effect logic to help distinguish between symptom and cause when evaluating activities within a system. You are able to draw from the results both the outcomes and causes of the system. Perhaps you know that there is more often, very few root causes and similarly a limited number of outcomes that reveal themselves when this work is conducted properly.
Cause-Effect analysis do have to rely on different levels of abstraction (models). Depending on complexity, you can adjust the level of abstraction applying inductive through deductive logic, the linear cause and effect logic is applicable depending on the entity under evaluation, both man-made and natural environmental risks. In many cases, multi-sequential adverse event propagation is applicable for man-made systems. Further consider the interaction of complex system elements: the human, software, logic abstraction, and the business environment. Consequently, the adverse propagation is dependent of physics, expected human dynamics and the specific entity design. Accordingly, Cause Effect analysis anticipates purpose but not until the system is actualized, can you really observe manifest purpose.
If the original intent is expressed in Effect on Context, then a system design can be analyzed as to likelihood of purpose. However, if design is expressed as conformance to a pile of 'system shall' statements called requirements, then there is no solid basis for anticipating fitness for purpose, because the purpose of the system is not conformance to requirement. The purpose of the system development may be conformance to requirements, but that does not mean the operational system will be fit for purpose. So using effect as a descriptor for purpose has issues, in that when an observer changes what they see as the effect of that set of interactions, then the purpose also must be described differently, which begs the question why is describing purpose useful? Purpose entails a) Effect on context, b) Intended vs. Actual, and c) Source of Effect. Designers are source of intended effect and unintended effects. System in operation is the source of actual effects, thereby reveals actual purpose, but is not the Source of Purpose, only the means for cause Purpose (both intended and unintended) to happen.
It’s important to distinguish between desired output and purpose of a system; and discern behavior vs. purpose as well. In mathematical programming, the purpose is called cost function and the solution is the desired output. It's true that we can express the relation as "cause and effect," but the purpose is introduced by designer. It is also useful to discern behavior (response to stimulus) vs. purpose (effect on context). The effect caused by a stimulus is also called behavior. That 'effect' refers to the entity that experienced the cause. That 'effect' is different from the effect that system behavior has on its context. The effect of cause-effect may be seen as a yet another cause. Thus, you need an extra effort to do extrapolation and find the purpose. Certain "systems" attend to cause and effect and they do not define purpose. The systems "state," not "purpose," needs to be considered as well. These systems include "dynamic" complex sociotechnical systems ones. While they are unintended they include system failure outcomes, but nothing to do with system cause and effect purpose.
People have purposes that arise from our interactions with others. They too are influenced by unconscious emotions these are manifest as values, social, political, technical etc.. These tend to be dynamic because our interactions are dynamic. People also have purposes that they associate with outcomes, these are influenced by their unconscious motives and are manifest as goals objectives etc. In a positive sense that ST thinking concepts can assist you to address particular problem situations that would otherwise would not for a particular purpose). It’s helpful to view system models in an outcomes sense, and that can be reflected through cause and effect and intentions of those involved.
Purpose is the source of all power. It is amazing what people can do when they see they have a source of all power within themselves, a system can be seen, to have a purpose of its own when it produces unexpected behaviour. And some complex systems produce behaviour that is hard fathom and sometimes impossible to understand. But these properties function together as one interactive, dynamic, multi-dimensional system of purpose that is at the heart of any human system.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
August 1, 2015
Is HR Best Practices Overused
Principle, Policy, Practice, Process and Performance are all important term in modern management discipline. However, the situation is, what is relevant to one organization may not, and is probably not, to another. There are principles, policies, and practices that a company could adopt from another, but even if in the same sector, there is no guarantee of success taking into account Leadership, Culture and historical practices.
Principle, Policy, Practice, Process and Performance are all important term in modern management discipline. However, the situation is, what is relevant to one organization may not, and is probably not, to another. There are principles, policies, and practices that a company could adopt from another, but even if in the same sector, there is no guarantee of success taking into account Leadership, Culture and historical practices.
It's very difficult to call anything a 'best practice' because if it were, EVERYONE would know about it. In the end, it is what works best for YOUR company that leadership determines. So many of these types of questions are answered 'it depends.' It depends because every company, location, industry is different. However, it is good to know the principles of effective practices - that help you learn from one another- learn from each others mistakes, but not fall into the trap of copying each other and expecting the same results. HR professionals need to make more evidence based decisions and be equipped with a strong understanding of what effective practice means for your own industry- that way you can make more informed decisions and be in a better position to question the business partners.
HR Benchmarking practice needs to be more strategic focus: Formal benchmarking helps provide evidence but only if you are benchmarking your own practices and outcomes with others as this can potentially highlight strengths, weaknesses and how you can improve performance. Benchmarking done well is about becoming the best you can be ( and getting there faster), not about proving you are the best - there in lies the route to complacency! Traditional HR benchmarks tend to be transactional ( budgets, headcounts) and don't provide any indication of how to change behaviour and improve outcomes. Ideally, the transformational HR needs to benchmark with strategic measures (growth, future-driven performance) with the clear goals to change mindset, behaviors and outcomes.
Your “best practices” need to be well aligned with your core value, principles, and standards. If you are asking your employees to follow "best practices" how do you write performance evaluations? Are you measuring the performance against the best practices or the standards within your company? Employees should follow best practices, but often, those best practices are not aligned with corporate values, corporate strategy or performance metrics. Best practice is a phrase that is overused and poorly understood in many business areas not just HR. You will hear "best practices" thrown around everywhere in many sectors etc. What does it mean , therefore, it’s always important to get back to the fundamentals.
Either best practice or next practice, there are definitely effective practices that link to better performance outcomes, but in a dynamic knowledge based environment, these may change slightly or significantly from one organization to another - there is no BEST that necessarily works for all. Either for HR, IT or any other business functions, best practices perhaps help you improve efficiency, but innovation and strategy will differentiate you from the mass, and build competency to become an industrial leader.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Principle, Policy, Practice, Process and Performance are all important term in modern management discipline. However, the situation is, what is relevant to one organization may not, and is probably not, to another. There are principles, policies, and practices that a company could adopt from another, but even if in the same sector, there is no guarantee of success taking into account Leadership, Culture and historical practices. It's very difficult to call anything a 'best practice' because if it were, EVERYONE would know about it. In the end, it is what works best for YOUR company that leadership determines. So many of these types of questions are answered 'it depends.' It depends because every company, location, industry is different. However, it is good to know the principles of effective practices - that help you learn from one another- learn from each others mistakes, but not fall into the trap of copying each other and expecting the same results. HR professionals need to make more evidence based decisions and be equipped with a strong understanding of what effective practice means for your own industry- that way you can make more informed decisions and be in a better position to question the business partners.
HR Benchmarking practice needs to be more strategic focus: Formal benchmarking helps provide evidence but only if you are benchmarking your own practices and outcomes with others as this can potentially highlight strengths, weaknesses and how you can improve performance. Benchmarking done well is about becoming the best you can be ( and getting there faster), not about proving you are the best - there in lies the route to complacency! Traditional HR benchmarks tend to be transactional ( budgets, headcounts) and don't provide any indication of how to change behaviour and improve outcomes. Ideally, the transformational HR needs to benchmark with strategic measures (growth, future-driven performance) with the clear goals to change mindset, behaviors and outcomes.
Your “best practices” need to be well aligned with your core value, principles, and standards. If you are asking your employees to follow "best practices" how do you write performance evaluations? Are you measuring the performance against the best practices or the standards within your company? Employees should follow best practices, but often, those best practices are not aligned with corporate values, corporate strategy or performance metrics. Best practice is a phrase that is overused and poorly understood in many business areas not just HR. You will hear "best practices" thrown around everywhere in many sectors etc. What does it mean , therefore, it’s always important to get back to the fundamentals.
Either best practice or next practice, there are definitely effective practices that link to better performance outcomes, but in a dynamic knowledge based environment, these may change slightly or significantly from one organization to another - there is no BEST that necessarily works for all. Either for HR, IT or any other business functions, best practices perhaps help you improve efficiency, but innovation and strategy will differentiate you from the mass, and build competency to become an industrial leader.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
How to Leverage Paradoxical Thinking and Systems Thinking to Understand the World
Our conscience and morality in living a quality of life that sustains health of the mind, body and spirit, leads us to put a yardstick to events. Everything is perspective. Everything is judgment based upon that perspective that is influenced by our own mentality, experiences and also our belief systems. As olding saying: “Nothing is either good or bad, but out thinking makes it so.”
The world you perceive depends on the way you see and the lenses you use. (Covey) Somethings are always good, and some always bad, especially if you include concepts and emotions in your definition of "things." Good or Bad? It can depend on the way we 'see' the world. Our paradigms can be "compared to the lenses in our glasses. What we see isn't a completely accurate reflection of reality," it is shaped by our thought processes, attitudes and perceptions. The objective Truth, we use as our yardstick, is just as much an illusion as our subjective perceptions: good vs. bad, talking vs. listening, giving vs. receiving etc.... anything 'social' or 'joint' that benefits all of us in a dance of harmonious balance. What you may think is bad, is not to someone else. Good and bad are simply perspectives, shaped by culture and personal experience. People are different, culture are different, however, as for the substance: human moral constructs determine right and wrong. Regardless religion, culture and any other difference, there’s compass to help human beings find the common ground, people can respect the difference and move to the upground from common ground through empathy, and to harmonize and make collective progress in human society. A"Thinking" classifies many things, Good" and "bad" depend on how you believe a situation to be - influenced by your consciousness and attitude about life. Consciousness is the quality or state of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind. Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe that there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is. The attitude and behavior depend significantly on human values, conceived a new image of human for emphasizing the role that our species can play in shaping its own destiny, as humans have always created an environment of their own out of symbols which become human values after being cultivated; they may develop new abilities to direct their own evolution on ethical values determined according to emergent realities created by an interdependent global community. Each really new idea needs to break one or more old habitual thoughts. Even an old idea of Free Will, for example, needs to break habitual thought about the same cause having the same effect. And many other habitual thoughts revolve around mediocre understanding of causality. This explains “resulting tendency towards inefficiency and stagnation” and the danger of “egalitarianism” “resulting tendency towards inefficiency and stagnation” --- turning into, what is mediocracy...
Symbolic systems (language, beliefs, law, customs, values, morality,…) are the most important subject for researching in global perspectives. These kind of systems may lead groups of humans to raise their consciousness about the need of organizing consistently their means (ideas) — choosing and implementing them according to their ends (goals). The healthy, then moral evolvement of human relations, being necessary for pushing ahead frankly and effectively the development of any particular community, makes necessary to create, maintain and improve the kind of cultural values that may help and lead people, to develop individually and collectively their gregarious and cooperative features inherent in human nature which combined with sense of responsibility and free decision would support altogether the manifestation of humanitarian societies aware of the role of human beings on the planet Earth.
We are on the major shift from industrial silo to digital hyperconnectivity, now the physical barriers: the oceans, the mountains and deserts can no longer isolate us, and knowlege is only clicks away, Success in the digital world demands both paradoxical thinking - to see the two sides of the coin; and Systems Thinking - to understand the interconnected nature of digital societal system. But this old saying is still true: “Nothing is either good or bad, but our thinking makes it so.”
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Is Digital Leadership more “Harder” or “Softer”?
The hard core of leadership never changes: it’s all about making the positive influence, and providing direction, both for oneself and others.
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. Businesses need to recognize the change and help leaders meet the challenge via business savvy and agility. Improvisation, fact finding, analysis and synthesis, trial and error, all are marks of leadership. However, compare to industrial leadership, is digital leadership 'harder or softer'? How can you get the balance right - Leadership substance, leadership competency and leadership styles?
Leadership is the well combination of “Hard Skills” and “Soft Skills”: The "hard-core" of leadership is 'soft': It is about influence and change. Now, here's the hard truth that all leadership-oriented organizations must deal with. As long as investors and the stock market hold the Boards and top management of any private or public company accountable for achieving certain financial and operating objectives over the short and long term, the practical reality of today's business world is that business leaders must have both technical "hard" skills and leadership "soft" skills in the proper ratio. Although the line between the hard and the soft skills are blurring. When cataloging the "hard" skills in the leadership and management study, there are groups of skills that might be considered. The first one would be business strategy skills including visionary thinking, strategic planning, market evaluation and customer needs, product development, capital planning, Board and external market management, corporate culture, technology trends, executive management requirements, among others. The second one would be the management skills of planning, leading, organizing and controlling. The third one would be the operational skills of Marketing, Sales, Operations, Engineering & Research, Manufacturing, etc. The fourth one would be financial skills such as Income and Cash Flow Statement and Balance Sheet knowledge, etc.
Leadership is more agile, elastic and resilient in the digital era: Leadership is figuring out which decisions need to be made and laying out a compelling vision for the path to follow. Leadership is also the ability to make smart decisions for the short- and long-term ability to gain active support for their successful execution. Static leadership does not work well. Leaders must master more than one management style, and must adapt to a changing business environment. To embrace change can be seen as a desired behavior just like “display trustworthiness” or “lead by example”. Leadership “hard” skills can and should be defined, but also leadership and management skills. Plus key desired behaviors. This is useful when defining leadership roles and levels when identifying leader development areas, and when assessing leadership skills and experience. Broad management/leadership education is typically streamlined, but it’s useful for individual add-on education and training. It is also useful for career planning purposes. The great leaders use their personality, and should be encouraged to do so. In the best of all possible worlds, businesses would have individual assessment and programs tailored to meet that person's goals, strengths and areas for improvement.
Leadership and management always go hand-in-hand: Business leaders need business strategy skills (such as vision, strategic plans, technology trends, corporate culture, go-to-market model…). They also need good managerial skills (such as organizing their leadership team, measurement, follow-up results…). They need to understand, build and assess the operational skills in their leadership teams. Business leaders also need people management skills and key desired behaviors. They need to fully understand financial targets, and they need an excellent management team. But in addition, business leaders need to be authentic. This is not something you teach or measure. A business leader should be allowed and encouraged to excel by using their personality. Leaders do need to focus on the bottom line but also apply visionary and strategic thinking, plus enthusiasm, and unique personal leadership styles. The result can be brilliant corporate achievements. Soulless managers who only focus on numbers won’t make it far, but can cause lots of damage in the organization.
The substance of leadership never changes, it’s all about making the positive influence, and providing direction, both for oneself and others. However, leadership competency and styles need to be adaptable to the increasing speed of change and hyperconnected and interdependent nature of businesses and global society today. Leadership is about striking the balance of both the hard and soft elements. Leadership is about vision, also about alignment and integration.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
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. Businesses need to recognize the change and help leaders meet the challenge via business savvy and agility. Improvisation, fact finding, analysis and synthesis, trial and error, all are marks of leadership. However, compare to industrial leadership, is digital leadership 'harder or softer'? How can you get the balance right - Leadership substance, leadership competency and leadership styles?
Leadership is the well combination of “Hard Skills” and “Soft Skills”: The "hard-core" of leadership is 'soft': It is about influence and change. Now, here's the hard truth that all leadership-oriented organizations must deal with. As long as investors and the stock market hold the Boards and top management of any private or public company accountable for achieving certain financial and operating objectives over the short and long term, the practical reality of today's business world is that business leaders must have both technical "hard" skills and leadership "soft" skills in the proper ratio. Although the line between the hard and the soft skills are blurring. When cataloging the "hard" skills in the leadership and management study, there are groups of skills that might be considered. The first one would be business strategy skills including visionary thinking, strategic planning, market evaluation and customer needs, product development, capital planning, Board and external market management, corporate culture, technology trends, executive management requirements, among others. The second one would be the management skills of planning, leading, organizing and controlling. The third one would be the operational skills of Marketing, Sales, Operations, Engineering & Research, Manufacturing, etc. The fourth one would be financial skills such as Income and Cash Flow Statement and Balance Sheet knowledge, etc.
Leadership is more agile, elastic and resilient in the digital era: Leadership is figuring out which decisions need to be made and laying out a compelling vision for the path to follow. Leadership is also the ability to make smart decisions for the short- and long-term ability to gain active support for their successful execution. Static leadership does not work well. Leaders must master more than one management style, and must adapt to a changing business environment. To embrace change can be seen as a desired behavior just like “display trustworthiness” or “lead by example”. Leadership “hard” skills can and should be defined, but also leadership and management skills. Plus key desired behaviors. This is useful when defining leadership roles and levels when identifying leader development areas, and when assessing leadership skills and experience. Broad management/leadership education is typically streamlined, but it’s useful for individual add-on education and training. It is also useful for career planning purposes. The great leaders use their personality, and should be encouraged to do so. In the best of all possible worlds, businesses would have individual assessment and programs tailored to meet that person's goals, strengths and areas for improvement.
Leadership and management always go hand-in-hand: Business leaders need business strategy skills (such as vision, strategic plans, technology trends, corporate culture, go-to-market model…). They also need good managerial skills (such as organizing their leadership team, measurement, follow-up results…). They need to understand, build and assess the operational skills in their leadership teams. Business leaders also need people management skills and key desired behaviors. They need to fully understand financial targets, and they need an excellent management team. But in addition, business leaders need to be authentic. This is not something you teach or measure. A business leader should be allowed and encouraged to excel by using their personality. Leaders do need to focus on the bottom line but also apply visionary and strategic thinking, plus enthusiasm, and unique personal leadership styles. The result can be brilliant corporate achievements. Soulless managers who only focus on numbers won’t make it far, but can cause lots of damage in the organization.
The substance of leadership never changes, it’s all about making the positive influence, and providing direction, both for oneself and others. However, leadership competency and styles need to be adaptable to the increasing speed of change and hyperconnected and interdependent nature of businesses and global society today. Leadership is about striking the balance of both the hard and soft elements. Leadership is about vision, also about alignment and integration.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Customer Journey vs. Customer Experience vs. Employee Experience
The good Customer Experience management is a norm, but a great Customer Journey with exceptional Customer Experience offers the 'WOW' factor.
It is without a doubt that many organizations have come to the realization that in order to be successful within their industry, they have to focus their efforts on the Customer Experience, to build a customer-centric organization. However, what do you think Customer Experience is all about? What is the difference between Customer Experience and Customer Journey and can they be used interchangeably? Employees deliver the Customer Experience, should you also be mapping Employee Experience with the same rigor as Customer Journeys?
Customer Journey is the end to end set of activities and processes that a customer completes while acquiring a company's products or services. The customer journey is all of the things you do to take a flight from A to B, from the moment you go to the website to order tickets, to when you walk off the plane at your destination. Customer Experience can then be defined as a set of conscious and subconscious attitudes, feelings, and beliefs regarding said activities. The idea is to understand the Customer Experience in order to refine the Customer Journey. The Customer Experience is how you feel about the whole process. It is the sum of all thoughts, experiences, feelings, reactions, attitudes, etc, that customer have or will have in regards to using or potential using of your product or service. Customer Experience can be either overall (in regards to the entire product) or in regards to just one touchpoint with the product or service. The Customer Journey is a representation of the touchpoints a customer engages with a brand.
Customer Journey Map is a visual interpretation of individuals’ relationship with an organization, service, product or brand over time and across channels. The experience dives much deeper into each touch point and the whole experience. The deep look uncovers the nuance and emotion of each touch point and the transitions in between. You need to understand the journey before you can focus on the experience. The journey is the path customers take. The experience is the fulfillment of a need that keeps them on the path to you, or the lack of fulfillment of a need that causes them to abandon the path to you and seek a different one, the journey is for awareness, the journey is for service received, and the journey is for retention, etc.
The employee can greatly influence the customer's perception of the company and its products or services. Statistically, the #1 reason for customers leaving a company is an attitude of indifference from a company representative. Companies have not yet understood the extent of the influence an employee has in any situation with a customer. One way to gain this needed insight would be to do an employee journey map and integrate that into the customer journey map to see where the disconnects are. It is these disconnect points that will reveal opportunities that will benefit not only the customer but the employee as well. Employee Engagement mirrors Customer Experience levels. And when as an organization you have the capability of doing Customer Journey Mapping, you can use this to map Employee Journeys! Said differently, the value a product or service has for a customer can be influenced by an employee he or she is in contact with.
Employee Experience itself has layers of optimization - direct work environment related and employment related. It's an interesting world emerging ahead of us. As far as digital and employee contributions, there is a clear trend emerging about the need for the coexistence of both to really deliver that branded experience. Fundamentally organizations need to understand whether their process or the elements of the process are commodity or intimate. Forcing customers through a commodity digital channel when it requires an intimate approach will never achieve high levels of satisfaction. So the conversation is how you use employees as mechanisms in a process to transform an input into an output for optimizing Customer Experience. The focus is then on required skills, knowledge and attributes of the employee. Where emotional intelligence is a differentiator then the selection, training and coaching (continuous development) of such employees is a core competence.
The good Customer Experience management is a norm, but a great Customer Journey with exceptional Customer Experience offers the 'WOW' concept as the necessary success factor to ensure you stay ahead of the game, particularly with your peers in business. Hence, you have to put the customer and the employee at the heart of everything that you do as a business - excellent employee experience directly influences exceptional customer experience, and great customer experience management is a differentiator for companies. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
It is without a doubt that many organizations have come to the realization that in order to be successful within their industry, they have to focus their efforts on the Customer Experience, to build a customer-centric organization. However, what do you think Customer Experience is all about? What is the difference between Customer Experience and Customer Journey and can they be used interchangeably? Employees deliver the Customer Experience, should you also be mapping Employee Experience with the same rigor as Customer Journeys?Customer Journey is the end to end set of activities and processes that a customer completes while acquiring a company's products or services. The customer journey is all of the things you do to take a flight from A to B, from the moment you go to the website to order tickets, to when you walk off the plane at your destination. Customer Experience can then be defined as a set of conscious and subconscious attitudes, feelings, and beliefs regarding said activities. The idea is to understand the Customer Experience in order to refine the Customer Journey. The Customer Experience is how you feel about the whole process. It is the sum of all thoughts, experiences, feelings, reactions, attitudes, etc, that customer have or will have in regards to using or potential using of your product or service. Customer Experience can be either overall (in regards to the entire product) or in regards to just one touchpoint with the product or service. The Customer Journey is a representation of the touchpoints a customer engages with a brand.
Customer Journey Map is a visual interpretation of individuals’ relationship with an organization, service, product or brand over time and across channels. The experience dives much deeper into each touch point and the whole experience. The deep look uncovers the nuance and emotion of each touch point and the transitions in between. You need to understand the journey before you can focus on the experience. The journey is the path customers take. The experience is the fulfillment of a need that keeps them on the path to you, or the lack of fulfillment of a need that causes them to abandon the path to you and seek a different one, the journey is for awareness, the journey is for service received, and the journey is for retention, etc.
The employee can greatly influence the customer's perception of the company and its products or services. Statistically, the #1 reason for customers leaving a company is an attitude of indifference from a company representative. Companies have not yet understood the extent of the influence an employee has in any situation with a customer. One way to gain this needed insight would be to do an employee journey map and integrate that into the customer journey map to see where the disconnects are. It is these disconnect points that will reveal opportunities that will benefit not only the customer but the employee as well. Employee Engagement mirrors Customer Experience levels. And when as an organization you have the capability of doing Customer Journey Mapping, you can use this to map Employee Journeys! Said differently, the value a product or service has for a customer can be influenced by an employee he or she is in contact with.
Employee Experience itself has layers of optimization - direct work environment related and employment related. It's an interesting world emerging ahead of us. As far as digital and employee contributions, there is a clear trend emerging about the need for the coexistence of both to really deliver that branded experience. Fundamentally organizations need to understand whether their process or the elements of the process are commodity or intimate. Forcing customers through a commodity digital channel when it requires an intimate approach will never achieve high levels of satisfaction. So the conversation is how you use employees as mechanisms in a process to transform an input into an output for optimizing Customer Experience. The focus is then on required skills, knowledge and attributes of the employee. Where emotional intelligence is a differentiator then the selection, training and coaching (continuous development) of such employees is a core competence. The good Customer Experience management is a norm, but a great Customer Journey with exceptional Customer Experience offers the 'WOW' concept as the necessary success factor to ensure you stay ahead of the game, particularly with your peers in business. Hence, you have to put the customer and the employee at the heart of everything that you do as a business - excellent employee experience directly influences exceptional customer experience, and great customer experience management is a differentiator for companies. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
July 31, 2015
An Inquisitive Board: How to Ask the Tough Questions
The board's role is to pull management out of the trees to see the forest!
Generally speaking, Boards have a couple of main functions such as strategy oversight, governance practices, providing advice to executives, and resource provision, etc. So the Board should be knowledge enough to set broad strategic goals. They need to educate themselves by hearing different views about the organization, its environment, and strategic alternatives. Even the majority of BoDs are senior executives, they need to breakdown the “status quo,” present learning agility and show the inquisitiveness to ask the tough and right questions. The board represents the ownership and they really cannot do a good job if they don't have the courage and knowledge to question and challenge and set the broad strategic goals, culture tones, and the digital theme of boardroom itself. As an inquisitive BoD: How do you ask the tough questions?
From a governance perspective, are you investing in a GPS system to guide through or a defensive system to mitigate risks only? The question on how hard to push the accelerator (to reach strategic goals) depends entirely on the readiness of each organization’s braking system (governance and risk management readiness). The role of board members must always be to focus on the strategic initiatives of the organization amidst the mounting pressure of governance, regulatory compliance and risk management responsibilities. Some boards seem to relish in building the most capable defensive system instead of investing in a sophisticated GPS system to guide the organization down their chosen path. It will only be when the internal and external emphasis shifts from regulatory and compliance governance to identifying, reporting and developing the behavioural governance, team dynamics, director reviews, performance, selection, etc., of organizations that you will make a quantum move away from these repeated instances of governance failure.
With regard to the strategic thinking, keep asking what’s happening in your market and what’re your competitors doing., etc. The main role of a board is to oversee strategy with the executive management. A board should be engaged in by scrutinizing the strategy, the leadership of the board, along with senior management, can benefit from a 'Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats' analysis if one has not been performed recently. That could be a way of focusing the board and management back on some of the strategic issues needing to be addressed to strengthen and grow the organization. There are few substitutes for looking honestly and objectively at the possibility that the business may not be as strong as you have assumed it is as well as what is happening in your market and what your competitors are doing. That's a conversation that can lead to good results for the business.
From risk management perspective, continue to question: what’re your downside risks and what’re your upside risks? Risk assessment is important and something a board, through its appropriate committee, should be aware of and work with management to plug holes and mitigate risk. One thing you might think about "risk" is the two types - downside risk or upside risk. The latter being the uncertainty about whether projects will succeed while the former may not have any positive gain but is simply loss prevention. In addition to financial risk management functions, talent-succession risk management functions are also an important responsibility for every Board of Directors. By categorizing the different type of risks, Board can pay more attention to the company's bottom line operation and top-line growth potential.
Ask deep questions about the “culture things” What’s the current culture? What’s the culture wanted? Culture is the most invisible, but a powerful element in businesses. In sociology, the elements of culture are described as values, beliefs, behavior and rituals. If the company does not have culture readiness for change, willingness to be inventive, employees who feel leaders present a good case for change, and good communications, among other things, there is little hope for change. So strategy alone can't fix an inflexible or old model company. Culture is not easily changeable. It is embedded in the organization's DNA. The strategy has to be built around culture. If a strategy is absent, the culture will create one. By providing people with the corporate elements of a culture specific to the corporate aspirations, leadership both engages and empowers people so that everyone knows what needs to be achieved and has an organized ability to contribute. At the end of the day, engagement and empowerment are the desired outcomes from corporate culture and the elements that distinguish an effective leadership from a common management. Culture also defines what kind of people you hire. So if you hire non-risk takers, non-inventive, non-accountable etc. types of people it will be impossible to introduce a strategy which involves growth risk-taking, entrepreneurial behavior, accountability, etc. At boardroom, the further "problem" could be a cultural one as well, a strong culture of "positional management" where the Chief Executive could not be questioned and the directors simply did whatever they were told - even if it was wrong ! That's why external Independent Directors are critical to good governance. If well chosen, they are not afraid to ask whether the Emperor has his clothes on.
In order to “digitize” boardrooms, the BoDs need to show the inquisitiveness and ask tough questions from information technology perspective. Too many Boards are filled with pre-digital executives who not only have limited experience making technology decisions or assessments but whose eyes glaze over when the CIO comes into the room to provide an update. When IT is quite often a differentiating capability, how can Boards pay more attention to that area? The answer becomes self-evident, ensure there is at least one Board member fluent in “bilingual” to speak both business and IT dialects. In the digital world with enormous transformations, more often, technology is the disruptive force or game changer, companies with a digital strategy driven by the CIOs at a board level can better weave digital into every fabric of business and bring different perspectives on governance and risk intelligence. An IT friendly board shall change the perspective to understand the power of information and the potential of technology.
The board's role is to pull management out of the trees to see the forest. To see the shape of the landscape to come and how it will address this. To ensure there is a strong context for establishing the tactical choices and the surprises that will invariably show up. This is an interesting lesson for board directors; to continue questioning on important issues where management's answers do not make sense. Requiring detailed answers does not constitute interfering with management - it is consistent with good governance principles processes, and practices.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Generally speaking, Boards have a couple of main functions such as strategy oversight, governance practices, providing advice to executives, and resource provision, etc. So the Board should be knowledge enough to set broad strategic goals. They need to educate themselves by hearing different views about the organization, its environment, and strategic alternatives. Even the majority of BoDs are senior executives, they need to breakdown the “status quo,” present learning agility and show the inquisitiveness to ask the tough and right questions. The board represents the ownership and they really cannot do a good job if they don't have the courage and knowledge to question and challenge and set the broad strategic goals, culture tones, and the digital theme of boardroom itself. As an inquisitive BoD: How do you ask the tough questions?
From a governance perspective, are you investing in a GPS system to guide through or a defensive system to mitigate risks only? The question on how hard to push the accelerator (to reach strategic goals) depends entirely on the readiness of each organization’s braking system (governance and risk management readiness). The role of board members must always be to focus on the strategic initiatives of the organization amidst the mounting pressure of governance, regulatory compliance and risk management responsibilities. Some boards seem to relish in building the most capable defensive system instead of investing in a sophisticated GPS system to guide the organization down their chosen path. It will only be when the internal and external emphasis shifts from regulatory and compliance governance to identifying, reporting and developing the behavioural governance, team dynamics, director reviews, performance, selection, etc., of organizations that you will make a quantum move away from these repeated instances of governance failure.
With regard to the strategic thinking, keep asking what’s happening in your market and what’re your competitors doing., etc. The main role of a board is to oversee strategy with the executive management. A board should be engaged in by scrutinizing the strategy, the leadership of the board, along with senior management, can benefit from a 'Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats' analysis if one has not been performed recently. That could be a way of focusing the board and management back on some of the strategic issues needing to be addressed to strengthen and grow the organization. There are few substitutes for looking honestly and objectively at the possibility that the business may not be as strong as you have assumed it is as well as what is happening in your market and what your competitors are doing. That's a conversation that can lead to good results for the business.
From risk management perspective, continue to question: what’re your downside risks and what’re your upside risks? Risk assessment is important and something a board, through its appropriate committee, should be aware of and work with management to plug holes and mitigate risk. One thing you might think about "risk" is the two types - downside risk or upside risk. The latter being the uncertainty about whether projects will succeed while the former may not have any positive gain but is simply loss prevention. In addition to financial risk management functions, talent-succession risk management functions are also an important responsibility for every Board of Directors. By categorizing the different type of risks, Board can pay more attention to the company's bottom line operation and top-line growth potential.
Ask deep questions about the “culture things” What’s the current culture? What’s the culture wanted? Culture is the most invisible, but a powerful element in businesses. In sociology, the elements of culture are described as values, beliefs, behavior and rituals. If the company does not have culture readiness for change, willingness to be inventive, employees who feel leaders present a good case for change, and good communications, among other things, there is little hope for change. So strategy alone can't fix an inflexible or old model company. Culture is not easily changeable. It is embedded in the organization's DNA. The strategy has to be built around culture. If a strategy is absent, the culture will create one. By providing people with the corporate elements of a culture specific to the corporate aspirations, leadership both engages and empowers people so that everyone knows what needs to be achieved and has an organized ability to contribute. At the end of the day, engagement and empowerment are the desired outcomes from corporate culture and the elements that distinguish an effective leadership from a common management. Culture also defines what kind of people you hire. So if you hire non-risk takers, non-inventive, non-accountable etc. types of people it will be impossible to introduce a strategy which involves growth risk-taking, entrepreneurial behavior, accountability, etc. At boardroom, the further "problem" could be a cultural one as well, a strong culture of "positional management" where the Chief Executive could not be questioned and the directors simply did whatever they were told - even if it was wrong ! That's why external Independent Directors are critical to good governance. If well chosen, they are not afraid to ask whether the Emperor has his clothes on.
In order to “digitize” boardrooms, the BoDs need to show the inquisitiveness and ask tough questions from information technology perspective. Too many Boards are filled with pre-digital executives who not only have limited experience making technology decisions or assessments but whose eyes glaze over when the CIO comes into the room to provide an update. When IT is quite often a differentiating capability, how can Boards pay more attention to that area? The answer becomes self-evident, ensure there is at least one Board member fluent in “bilingual” to speak both business and IT dialects. In the digital world with enormous transformations, more often, technology is the disruptive force or game changer, companies with a digital strategy driven by the CIOs at a board level can better weave digital into every fabric of business and bring different perspectives on governance and risk intelligence. An IT friendly board shall change the perspective to understand the power of information and the potential of technology.
The board's role is to pull management out of the trees to see the forest. To see the shape of the landscape to come and how it will address this. To ensure there is a strong context for establishing the tactical choices and the surprises that will invariably show up. This is an interesting lesson for board directors; to continue questioning on important issues where management's answers do not make sense. Requiring detailed answers does not constitute interfering with management - it is consistent with good governance principles processes, and practices.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
July 30, 2015
Five Barriers to Change Management Success
Managing change is no longer a one-time project, but an ongoing business capability.
Change is inevitable, and organizational change becomes a common practice within an organization, but more than two-thirds of change effort fail to achieve the expected results. What’re the barriers to cause the change failures, and how to make Change Management tangible rather than fluffy?
Not investing enough time to discover the root cause of issues.People seem to feel efficient -doing things right, when working on the problem reactively. However, effectiveness - doing the right things, requires a little bit of thinking before doing with a proactive mentality and attitude. ''If you're very busy, you should sit down, if you're extremely busy, you should lay down'' referring to the analyzing process what the problem really is and how you should go about solving it. Digging through the big WHY is extremely important either for change or any kind of business initiatives, and leveraging Systems Thinking to discover the root cause is about seeing the interconnectivity between the parts and the whole, to avoid the “Change for its own sake” symptom, and often fix the things from the “mindset” level. All changes require a cooling period. Business cannot take initiative for granted.
Lack of executive sponsorship and management accountability: There must be a senior executive to act as a sponsor for the project of change, yet being the name at the top of a change organizational chart is not enough. The sponsor must be fully engaged with the change, willing to be visible, willing to lead other senior stakeholders and ready to participate (or at least attend to learn) workshops and project meetings. If the sponsor is him/herself the barrier, the change manager must try to identify and break those barriers. It's rarely easy, but it is essential. Organizational Change Management initiatives also need business stakeholders who accept ownership for decision making and accountability. The culture side should have a bit in about the culture of management not meeting or aligning with the organization's values. This is usually down to a lack of enforcement at the top etc. The need for the change must be identified as well as affected users. Those users (primary and secondary) should be made aware of why the change is necessary. The executive sponsor and change team manage timely or regular follow-up which is an absolute must. The personal involvement of the executive sponsor is obviously critical to overcoming the barriers.
Lack of a well-thought-out execution plan. One of the major barriers to successful change is the lack of a change plan. Change is more than a goal, it must be accompanied with well thought out execution plans. There are too many executives limit their role to idea identification and too few focus on execution planning. Working in cooperation with a project manager, schedule your change activities as part of the project - this will ensure that the cart is never before the horse, and there is sufficient time to prepare the stakeholders. Aiming is critical -- meaning execution planning. Otherwise, old projects get a cosmetic change to look like they are supporting the change when they are not. The execution plan needs to include measurement and risk management as well, to make your needs known, and manage risk smoothly. If you're not getting the support you need, it's a risk.
Lack of knowledge about organizational Design Principles (structure, resource, culture.) There are two options, namely, a dominant hierarchy or a non-dominant hierarchy, lack of resources (money, people, time, etc) and the sufficient knowledge to manage a Change Management project or program. Transformational change needs resolute leadership too, the premise behind this is more than simply obtaining senior buy-in. This is needed to support a cultural change through the change life cycle which enables everyone, wherever they are in that cycle, to accept the direction of travel and focus on benefits realization.
Lack of change review, reflection, and recognition: The lack of recognition for change impacts individuals and businesses’ willingness to extend themselves again for the next change. At a Change Initiative is completed, often team walks away without checking to see if it adds value or evaluating if additional work is required. Also, often teams are more interested in perception as opposed to value adds. Taking the time to communicate the expected outcome with consideration of the "right" way allows the team to have room to make success progressive. The lack of breathing space between change initiatives is an issue as well. Plowing on to the next big thing before completely embedding the change into business as usual or running multiple simultaneous changes can leave a workforce reeling and exhausted.
The speed of change is accelerating. Managing change is no longer a one-time initiative, and Change Management turns to be strategically important in today’s digital organizations. Therefore, by identifying these roadblocks for changes, organizations can build an ongoing business capability to ride above the learning curve and to manage changes and digital transformation more effortlessly.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Change is inevitable, and organizational change becomes a common practice within an organization, but more than two-thirds of change effort fail to achieve the expected results. What’re the barriers to cause the change failures, and how to make Change Management tangible rather than fluffy?
Not investing enough time to discover the root cause of issues.People seem to feel efficient -doing things right, when working on the problem reactively. However, effectiveness - doing the right things, requires a little bit of thinking before doing with a proactive mentality and attitude. ''If you're very busy, you should sit down, if you're extremely busy, you should lay down'' referring to the analyzing process what the problem really is and how you should go about solving it. Digging through the big WHY is extremely important either for change or any kind of business initiatives, and leveraging Systems Thinking to discover the root cause is about seeing the interconnectivity between the parts and the whole, to avoid the “Change for its own sake” symptom, and often fix the things from the “mindset” level. All changes require a cooling period. Business cannot take initiative for granted.
Lack of executive sponsorship and management accountability: There must be a senior executive to act as a sponsor for the project of change, yet being the name at the top of a change organizational chart is not enough. The sponsor must be fully engaged with the change, willing to be visible, willing to lead other senior stakeholders and ready to participate (or at least attend to learn) workshops and project meetings. If the sponsor is him/herself the barrier, the change manager must try to identify and break those barriers. It's rarely easy, but it is essential. Organizational Change Management initiatives also need business stakeholders who accept ownership for decision making and accountability. The culture side should have a bit in about the culture of management not meeting or aligning with the organization's values. This is usually down to a lack of enforcement at the top etc. The need for the change must be identified as well as affected users. Those users (primary and secondary) should be made aware of why the change is necessary. The executive sponsor and change team manage timely or regular follow-up which is an absolute must. The personal involvement of the executive sponsor is obviously critical to overcoming the barriers.
Lack of a well-thought-out execution plan. One of the major barriers to successful change is the lack of a change plan. Change is more than a goal, it must be accompanied with well thought out execution plans. There are too many executives limit their role to idea identification and too few focus on execution planning. Working in cooperation with a project manager, schedule your change activities as part of the project - this will ensure that the cart is never before the horse, and there is sufficient time to prepare the stakeholders. Aiming is critical -- meaning execution planning. Otherwise, old projects get a cosmetic change to look like they are supporting the change when they are not. The execution plan needs to include measurement and risk management as well, to make your needs known, and manage risk smoothly. If you're not getting the support you need, it's a risk.
Lack of knowledge about organizational Design Principles (structure, resource, culture.) There are two options, namely, a dominant hierarchy or a non-dominant hierarchy, lack of resources (money, people, time, etc) and the sufficient knowledge to manage a Change Management project or program. Transformational change needs resolute leadership too, the premise behind this is more than simply obtaining senior buy-in. This is needed to support a cultural change through the change life cycle which enables everyone, wherever they are in that cycle, to accept the direction of travel and focus on benefits realization.
Lack of change review, reflection, and recognition: The lack of recognition for change impacts individuals and businesses’ willingness to extend themselves again for the next change. At a Change Initiative is completed, often team walks away without checking to see if it adds value or evaluating if additional work is required. Also, often teams are more interested in perception as opposed to value adds. Taking the time to communicate the expected outcome with consideration of the "right" way allows the team to have room to make success progressive. The lack of breathing space between change initiatives is an issue as well. Plowing on to the next big thing before completely embedding the change into business as usual or running multiple simultaneous changes can leave a workforce reeling and exhausted.
The speed of change is accelerating. Managing change is no longer a one-time initiative, and Change Management turns to be strategically important in today’s digital organizations. Therefore, by identifying these roadblocks for changes, organizations can build an ongoing business capability to ride above the learning curve and to manage changes and digital transformation more effortlessly.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
How to Rebuild Trust in IT
Organizational success comes when IT and business act from 'IT vs. business' to "IT is Business" - A true partnership.
IT plays an unprecedented role in modern organizations today, information is the lifeblood of business; and digital technology is often the innovation disrupter. However, there is still a lack of trust relationship between business-IT, within IT or between IT and vendors. Is it because most of businesses still perceive their IT organizations as a cost center or help desk, rarely invite IT to the big table to co-create strategy? Is it because IT speaks the technology jargons the business doesn’t understand, or IT plays as a gatekeeper, not an enabler for taking advantage of the latest digital technology trend. Is it also because nowadays technology vendors walk around IT to directly sell their SaaS solutions to the business functions? What are some effective ways to build/rebuild trust in the IT organization? What are the considerations for the non-IT organizations to gain the trust from IT? What are the considerations for a service provider to gain the trust of IT organizations?
Business should empower their IT leaders to co-create strategy. The Non-IT executive needs to understand how to build a close relationship with the CIO and vice versa. Together as a team they can achieve a synergy that cannot be achieved as individuals. The skills can be learned, but it all comes down to relationships and what is best for the organization. Since, in most organizations, business and technology are forever interwoven, so should the CIO and the non-IT Executive team. In a perfect world, CIOs and IT would be asked to the table in strategy planning. Not the case right now in most places, it isn't a peer relationship right now until that perception is turned around.
IT has to rebrand itself from a back office function to an innovation engine. Change is the nature of information and technology, unfortunately, IT is perceived less innovative in most of the enterprises. Often they still implement software and methods long obsolete, with lower success rate of project delivery; Also IT overly focuses on “T” - technology and hardware side of work, not put enough attention for “I” - information side of the story. Fundamentally, IT is all about delivering the right information to the right people at the right time to make the right decisions. IT needs to involve the users by giving them active roles on the project, make them feel important, train them on the new product, appreciate and reward them then, your project is off to a successful start. IT employees need to have better understanding about business, treating IT projects not only as technical challenges but also as business initiatives to keep the customer involved and satisfied. The relationship between the vendors and IT is echoed often, it's not always just the IT and vendors that are working towards a solution. The business is usually involved if it is a business application. Thus, it's not just the customer-supplier engagement model that impacts, but a business-IT engagement model.
Business and IT have to work more collaboratively for improving the project success rate. Every IT project is the business project. The advocacy work continues through the life cycle of the project and then they will stay on board - they can visualize the benefit. You have to advocate the benefit to the firm or it's "just another project." It's hard enough to advocate back office improvement, especially when competing with product development resources, so you absolutely have to have executives and managers understand and buy-in. Change management team would work with the training department and unit managers to identify required training for each team, based on the functionalities of the new application. While delivering according to expectations, no excuses, is essential to building or rebuilding trust. First, make sure you understand the realities and the perceptions of the problem. Get to the bottom of the trust issue in your company. Then tackle it head on. Listen then act. Don't start by assuming you know the problem. Business is moving too fast to have infighting and distrust as challenges. Ensure the C-level group is aligned and includes a C-level IT leader that focuses on the company goals and is compensated for delivering on those goals. Make sure the C-level IT representative is an outstanding communicator, first and foremost a person that can inspire, motivate and lead as the rest of the C-level group does.
Organizational success comes when IT and business act from 'IT vs. business' to a true partnership. The business needs to have empathy and complexity mindset to understand IT better, and IT value to the business trumps the latest technology. Learn to listen to the business partner's pain points and develop an approach with the business unit. Only through working seamlessly, business as a whole can achieve high-performing result.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
IT plays an unprecedented role in modern organizations today, information is the lifeblood of business; and digital technology is often the innovation disrupter. However, there is still a lack of trust relationship between business-IT, within IT or between IT and vendors. Is it because most of businesses still perceive their IT organizations as a cost center or help desk, rarely invite IT to the big table to co-create strategy? Is it because IT speaks the technology jargons the business doesn’t understand, or IT plays as a gatekeeper, not an enabler for taking advantage of the latest digital technology trend. Is it also because nowadays technology vendors walk around IT to directly sell their SaaS solutions to the business functions? What are some effective ways to build/rebuild trust in the IT organization? What are the considerations for the non-IT organizations to gain the trust from IT? What are the considerations for a service provider to gain the trust of IT organizations?
Business should empower their IT leaders to co-create strategy. The Non-IT executive needs to understand how to build a close relationship with the CIO and vice versa. Together as a team they can achieve a synergy that cannot be achieved as individuals. The skills can be learned, but it all comes down to relationships and what is best for the organization. Since, in most organizations, business and technology are forever interwoven, so should the CIO and the non-IT Executive team. In a perfect world, CIOs and IT would be asked to the table in strategy planning. Not the case right now in most places, it isn't a peer relationship right now until that perception is turned around.
IT has to rebrand itself from a back office function to an innovation engine. Change is the nature of information and technology, unfortunately, IT is perceived less innovative in most of the enterprises. Often they still implement software and methods long obsolete, with lower success rate of project delivery; Also IT overly focuses on “T” - technology and hardware side of work, not put enough attention for “I” - information side of the story. Fundamentally, IT is all about delivering the right information to the right people at the right time to make the right decisions. IT needs to involve the users by giving them active roles on the project, make them feel important, train them on the new product, appreciate and reward them then, your project is off to a successful start. IT employees need to have better understanding about business, treating IT projects not only as technical challenges but also as business initiatives to keep the customer involved and satisfied. The relationship between the vendors and IT is echoed often, it's not always just the IT and vendors that are working towards a solution. The business is usually involved if it is a business application. Thus, it's not just the customer-supplier engagement model that impacts, but a business-IT engagement model.
Business and IT have to work more collaboratively for improving the project success rate. Every IT project is the business project. The advocacy work continues through the life cycle of the project and then they will stay on board - they can visualize the benefit. You have to advocate the benefit to the firm or it's "just another project." It's hard enough to advocate back office improvement, especially when competing with product development resources, so you absolutely have to have executives and managers understand and buy-in. Change management team would work with the training department and unit managers to identify required training for each team, based on the functionalities of the new application. While delivering according to expectations, no excuses, is essential to building or rebuilding trust. First, make sure you understand the realities and the perceptions of the problem. Get to the bottom of the trust issue in your company. Then tackle it head on. Listen then act. Don't start by assuming you know the problem. Business is moving too fast to have infighting and distrust as challenges. Ensure the C-level group is aligned and includes a C-level IT leader that focuses on the company goals and is compensated for delivering on those goals. Make sure the C-level IT representative is an outstanding communicator, first and foremost a person that can inspire, motivate and lead as the rest of the C-level group does.
Organizational success comes when IT and business act from 'IT vs. business' to a true partnership. The business needs to have empathy and complexity mindset to understand IT better, and IT value to the business trumps the latest technology. Learn to listen to the business partner's pain points and develop an approach with the business unit. Only through working seamlessly, business as a whole can achieve high-performing result.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
