Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1421

How to Delegate Decision Making in an Agile Environment?

 One of the most important tasks for management is to make decisions. However, in most of organizations, managers often make “gut feeling” decisions, lack of clear structure, process or information to do them effectively. So how to practice democracy to driven down decision making in an Agile environment? What about Agile strategic up-front, big-picture planning? This is where business goals and how they interrelate are agreed upon? And how to make integration of these goals with higher level processes? It is normal though by no means essential to have strategy and policy decided "centrally and high-up," but how about tactical and operational level decisions? To put simply, how to have the right people with the right information to make the right decision at the right time?

Framing the question: The key decision factor is how you frame the issue (to be decided on), another factor needing more attention is WHO makes the decision. The big “WHY” as the framing question is in rigorous pursuit of its answers. One has to realize context, motivation, structure, and longevity. No one word is more powerful than "WHY" in pursuit of vision and solution to the problems. Define and clarify the issue - does it warrant action? Next define if the matter urgent, important or both. Does your decision making process include opportunities? Opportunities need to identified as well and you need to know they fit with your strategy, be them growth, cost focus, market development strategies. While occasionally tactical decisions at the project level require coordination with strategic objectives of senior management, PMs, and CM practitioners are usually in the best position to make effective and timely decisions. Apart from this, most if not all operational decisions could be made by the people "on the ground" provided there is an adequate communications network so that the viewpoints that need to be taken into consideration are found and taken into consideration.
Agile decision making framework strikes the balance between “PUSH” & “PULL”: Agile frameworks talk about pushing the form, pulling the content or pushing the what, pulling the how. Some even talk about pushing the why, pulling the what and how. So the how as close to the practitioners is a given. And then how much less can be pushed and how much more can be pulled depends on how much of a learning organization you have, time frames, etc. Whether you use a push or a pull approach to get the knowledge from where it exists to where it is needed is a choice. Admittedly that doesn't entirely solve the problem, because "the knowledge that you need to know the what, how, why etc." in decision making is also important and without this, nobody would know when to push or pull. This type of knowledge is typically regarded as 'in-depth knowledge of the decision making process' and typically resides close to or within the people who enact the process, as these are the people who have best opportunity to learn that knowledge, and if the people are learning for themselves they will be building the knowledge of the process and thus know better than most.
Whether it is appropriate to drive down decision making in an Agile environment depends on determining what to do and how to do it. 1) 'how to do it' first. The usefulness of agile teams is that they provide a means for several domain experts to collaborate in order to do something, with a lot of coordination by mutual adjustment as 'something' reveals itself. No-one is able to set out exactly what to do at the start. To some extent everyone has to figure it out as they go, using their domain knowledge and expertise to make certain level decisions. 2) The 'what to do' covers strategic direction and coordination with projects or events outside the team's scope or awareness. Strategic direction is increasingly being conveyed through goals, intent or something similar. You might not always be able to clearly convey the strategic goals or their intent so there’s a certain amount of need for interventions to clarify them. There will almost always be over-arching strategy and policy decisions and guidelines driven from the top level, but the goal of having the team own as much of the decision process as possible should be about eliminating outside interference at all levels whenever possible, and helping the team to own the hopefully few constraints that are driven from outside the team, with the goals to make timely decision with adaptation of changes.
Either at individual level or organizational level; either at the top of organizational hierarchy or front line level: Decision Power is a mind-power; it guides what to select from available choices, how to accommodate constraints, how to avoid distractions, and where to show firmness and flexibility. Decision power is knowledge-based, wisdom-driven, and character-oriented. It needs to be practices at all level of organization in order to adapt to the increasing speed of changes and complexity & uncertainty of modern businesses.

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The True Value of Employees

Let's look at the definition of value in order to brainstorm what is the true value of employee. Value is something that is held to deserve; the importance or preciousness of something: To estimate the monetary worth of (something); worth - price - cost - merit - rate; appreciate - evaluate - estimate - appraise - assess. There is an attempt to quantify the value of an employee in financial terms, there is an element missing. It is easier to look at direct labor costs, burden, and even recruiting/hiring and training costs. But there is an element that is even harder to put into monetary terms. How does one put value on what an employee can add or take away from culture? How does one negative employee impact efficiency or productivity? How does a creative employee help the organization discover the new way to do things, hence saving the cost or improving the revenue., etc? The 'True Value' of an employee is: 'A total of what the employee brings to a business, now and in the future. You need to look at all aspects of their individual traits, work ethic, influence, creativity, experience, ability, achievements and performance, and the hidden potential each employee has if given the opportunity to accel within the work environment.
The true value of an employee would rather be measured by his or her quality, creativity and productivity. To measure the true value just by counting all the cost the company has paid to the employee would be so naive. There is a big difference between cost and quality. The true value of an employee is demonstrated when the employee acts as an ambassador of the organization (whether currently working or not, these are the folks who speak highly of the organization); brings the advanced mindset, knowledge, skills, abilities and personal attitude that translates into expected performance outcomes; has the capacity to be resilient towards change and acts as a change agent; possesses a capacity to attract and/ or retain quality talent; A valuable employee is a self leader who makes positive impact in business culture; stays current in their field/profession; freely innovates, creates new efficient ways of working; mentors and coaches others (reducing training and development costs and positively impacting on the performance of others). And the company gives him or her some responsibilities and how well an employee could perform to deliver this responsibilities (even beyond expectation) would be the true value of the employee.
The fun challenge for HR, is the idea of what counts as an investment as opposed to an expense. Corporations often boast that their employees are their greatest asset. While this is true in a sense - employees do provide the intellectual capital and manual labor necessary to establish the foundation of any sort of business, what is the dollar value of every person working for an organization? Although economic theory would suggest that the value of an employee is the wage that they obtain! An employee's "book value" can be viewed as a function of what investments have been made in them. Often times, employees are the innovators in an organization. They bring about cost saving improvements that might be overlooked. HR needs to logistically place a book value to these scenarios in order to explain importance of an intangible to business executives. There is an impact to the bottom line due to inspiration and culture addition. When there is negative culture in a company, efficiency and productivity decrease, employee engagement decreases causing mediocre work and creativity & productivity is compromised. The intangibles affect the bottom line beyond productivity to objectives. A disengaged employee can meet objectives perfectly well if they choose in order to keep their paycheck, but what happens to the quality and long term sustainability of a company when the employees are busy wasting time and would rather gossip and complain rather than add to the company's success? Replacing an employee does not correct the larger issue at hand if a company only values the financial proof of numbers.
The true question is: "What is the CONTRIBUTION of an employee to the total output of the organization?"It may be very difficult to quantify the true value of an employee to any company with so many variables to consider, such as productivity, creativity, influence, contribution, and performance, just to name a few. Some employees add much more, but some cannot be quantified. When employees create solutions from an internal combustion of inspiration, desire to excel, innate capacity, applied skill, and desire for affirmation, it has the potential to generate incredible value for the organization. Putting a value on actual costs is the easy part. It is much easier to quantify a position's value to a business, in terms of accounting and the bottom line strictly by calculating the real salary costs combined with any benefits and other fixed costs. However, value is multidimensional both in qualitative or quantitative way. Here are a set of criteria: 1). The QUALITY of the output delivered (new ideas, accurateness, value, positive culture influence, etc.);2). The SPEED in which the output is delivered;3). The AMOUNT of work (productivity); and the TIME spend on production (in relation with non-productive activities);4) The INNOVATION of work.5) The TIME ratio spending on production, innovation and administration tasks.6) The level of influence (leadership is not equal to title, expertise, culture influence, etc)7). The effective USE OF TOOLS;8). The level of HANDLING STRESS, because of throwbacks/resistance/conflicts, etc.9). The level of COMMUNICATION with colleagues 10). The amount FLEXIBILITY (is one able to do other tasks if needed);11). The lever of SELF-SUPPORT; 12). The amount of RESPONSIBILITY13). The rate of LEARNING = How quick does one turn experience into valuable output;
The value of employees can easily be determined by the progress of a company and leadership effectiveness. The firm doesn't own the humans. Humans have free will and are unpredictable. To try and put the "human condition" with all its complexities into an accounting equation is just mental gymnastics. Most managers are involved in transforming inputs and resources into new "value added" outputs, therefore there is value asking if more value could be added by leadership effectiveness, different inputs and different resources. Some of the leadership characteristics are: communications, resiliency, acceptance of change, conflict resolution, influencing skills, confidence, mentoring ability, interpersonal effectiveness. All of these behaviours mentioned are key traits to be had by an effective leader. Statistics show that employees will stay or leave an organization because of their leader. So if a company does not want to lose the “knowledge” then they may want to look more closely at their leaders. And valuable leaders will create more valuable employees. Therefore, managers at senior levels in businesses should spend time on finding ways to value their most important assets -people, this exercise will lead to a deeper understanding of behaviours that contribute value, as well as what knowledge is key and which processes are invaluable or redundant.
All organizations face a challenge to ascertain a value to their human resources because the performance of this resource cannot be attributed to any one/two 'constant' reasons. Each valuation will obviously vary in outcomes and results, as each workplace and position within varies. When you look at the true value of an employee, you are looking at the return on the investment that you have made. It also looks at the overall success of the company. You would really want your employees to be profit centers, which is a new paradigm evolving. This would be contrary to the traditional cost centers that have existed in organizations. The true value of employees are their ideas and promotion of the company brand. Their retention adds maximum benefit to recruitment expense and overall organizational effectiveness. Their value proposition and intelligence drive organizational progression and maturity.
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Wisdom in the Workplace

Statistically, more than two thirds of employees don’t feel engaged in the work and think their work is tedious, boring or their workplaces have no fun, unfair or even toxic, and even more worse, most of employees won’t tell their managers their true feeling. Can you figure out what employees are not saying and diagnose the root cause of problems, and what the wisdom in the workplace really mean for you?
Wisdom in workplace means to have work ethics and positive mindset, dealing with the situation intelligently, wisely and be impartial. Increase productivity and knowledge without pressure. Wise leaders have the patience to observe, listen, and process what is going on around them within the organizational hierarchy, and effectively execute with a decision or direction. The managers can foresee potential events, and act proactively to cope with them in advance of the event. It may come of experience, education, or intuition--so they are wise to take proactive steps to protect employees or the future of the organization.Wisdom in the workplace means to develop positive thinking and proactive actions in a workplace:
The wisdom in the workplace means to pass on the knowledge to others smoothly and build the culture of learning: People learn best by doing and coaching. We all learn in different ways. From management perspective, managers have to experience first hand the consequences of their behaviors, actions and decisions. They seem to benefit not only from self feedback, but also from observer feedback. Businesses can train leaders by giving them the information on how to be better communicator; coach them on how to be more effective decision makers. It gives managers knowledge about effective management and leadership skills. However, it is only after someone begins to actually practice these behaviors that they will gain wisdom. Because the spirit comes from the top, and then they can pass on the knowledge to others and build a culture of learning. Wisdom in the workplace is possessing the knowledge of your workplace inside and out and having the ability to pass on that knowledge to others.
Wisdom in the workplace means to have high-engaging employees and satisfied workforce. Employee disengagement is a widespread malady in organizations, causing the loss of billions of dollars, hours of dissatisfaction, and work lives lacking true value. People in organizations, singly and in groups, need stability, security and motivational factors to meet their basic needs; and, they all agree that for human beings to function to the best of their ability, they require recognition to fulfill their obligations, encouragement and opportunities to progress in order to gain a measure of self-esteem and contribute to society through a fair system of remuneration. Business leaders should avoid the following mismanagement symptom, and take necessary actions to transform a lethargic, disconnected organization into a thriving workplace.• Failing to openly and clearly communicate policies, plans and objectives; • Failing to acknowledge people’s presence and efforts; • Disregarding or showing disinterest in employees; • Failing to thank people for their time and effort when a job is well done; • Criticizing employees in public; lack of empathy• Operating policies of nepotism or favouritism; • Encouraging unprofessional internal competition but not co-operation and teamwork; • Lack of growth opportunity and career path; stick to culture of mediocrity.• Failing to offer reasonable levels of remuneration that take account of every aspect of work requirements, conditions and levels of responsibility; • Failing to provide relevant and appropriate training and update courses;
So obviously the wisdom in the workplace is not just about productivity, it’s more about building a positive and innovative culture, cultivating intelligent and empathic leadership and management team, driving fully engaging employees and building high-performing team, and the purpose is to well align corporate goals with employees’ career goals, encourage talent growth, create synergy by putting the right talent at the right position in the right time to achieve ultimate business result.

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The Promise and Peril of Metrics

We can only manage what we measure. Metrics provide feedback. Metrics are part of transparent visual management allowing pulling. There are many great things about metrics. However, there are people extremely obsessed by metrics who end up creating a huge and sophisticated set of meaningless metrics and that some managers may put a lot of energy on getting better indicators, just because they want beautiful numbers to report and not because they're genuinely interested in helping their teams to improve. So what’s the pros and cons, the promise and peril of metrics?
A measurement system is a necessary foundation for continuous improvement. Metrics can help you get some objective perspective on what you are trying to manage, but they need to be crafted and interpreted well. That is hard. If your team or organization doesn't have a (preferably simple) way of figuring out whether over a short span of time your worked better than in the previous period (and created more/enough value for the end-users), how will you reason about where to invest in improving? Surely you won't just try stuff at random, will you? One of the biggest problems with metrics in general is that, once you have them, people will try to game them and they influence the mood and moral of the people that read them.,
Another reason to use metrics is to help stakeholders understand what is going on. All stakeholders may not be in a position to visit the team or talk to team members, so the right metrics can be helpful is to track progress in an improvement initiative. Without measurements, it can be hard to tell whether attempted improvements make the situation better or worse. Typically, teams use metrics in this way internally, without reporting them outward, and stop tracking metrics after they have achieved their improvement goal (or determined they were on the wrong track). The maxim "You can't manage what you don't measure" has come to be taken as a truism. The right metric is requested in the right context, but without any explanation of why it is requested, without concern for whether the gathering is onerous, or without concern for whether there is a better or easier to gather metric that achieves the same goal, the measurement can easily go wrong.
Metrics help a team "fail fast" or show value delivered. Metrics is useful only when you can act on the value. The value is just a form of knowledge when there is no action. So you need to know the exact purpose of the metrics and what follow up action is needed if it does not meet the expectation. The different metrics only make sense at different stages in an organizational maturity. Metrics are a tool in the toolbox, but just because you have a hammer, not everything is a nail. While it sounds a bit cliche, it is true. So focus on metrics which help you identify trends, outliers, ask informed questions, create conversation, but ultimately you manage through relationships not metrics. Metrics themselves won't influence the way people behave, but the way they are used will force people to change their behavior.
Metrics shouldn’t motivate a team to game the data. We all have our biases. They are a necessary aspect of survival. However, they can filter and even distort qualitative evidence and prevent us from seeing the truth. Complementing qualitative insight with quantitative insight can sometimes give us a better picture of reality so we make better decisions and get better outcomes. Often you can see problems in using metrics when people aren't clear about what information they want to collect and how they intend to use the information to support decisions. This can lead to people trying to measure everything they can think of and display the information in every way possible, with no apparent reason for any of it.
There is a lot of metrics abuse and false assumptions of the metrics: But sometimes, people are obsessed with measuring things and asking for more and more measurements. Each new measurement takes some form of time to gather, collate and interpret. There is a lot of metrics abuse. People use inappropriate metrics for the situation. People twist metrics to match their agendas or their preconceived notions. Some of that has led to metrics avoidance. Next most measurements are exceptionally subjective, they have loose logic and reasonings and make many assumptions. In some organization,  the measurements, is being measured and then evaluated. Decisions are then made on theses so called metrics that complete and utterly wrong, based on many false assumptions of the metrics. Lots of people institute metrics without understanding them or understanding the assumptions upon which they are built. Why? Because some process told them to or because they worked for them in a completely different context.
The perception will come from the usage you're doing with metrics. Assuming an organization that believes that metrics can lead to continuous improvement, it won’t be just a matter of explicit communicating the intention behind metrics, but a matter of coaching and leadership to guide the team to understand the purpose of doing that and engaging on that. The perception comes not only from what you're doing with the metrics, but from whatever the team suspects you might be doing with them, including a lot of irrational (or rational) assumptions based on relationships, trust, and past experiences. Never underestimate the capacity for the human mind to weave a story regardless of the explicit communication and especially when it's overwhelmed by the rumor mill. So trust is important to gain positive mentality. Management wants people to understand what they are doing. If you want to do metrics, you want people to understand what those metrics are, what they are trying to achieve, and why you think it is appropriate in that specific context. Perhaps they will agree with you. When the team organization is measuring for the sake of getting numbers, you are creating waste and reducing productivity and team satisfaction...

What gets measured, gets managed. Metrics are not the end-all solution to management, but simply another set of tools, data, and information sets. Numbers permit one to collect and build out a quantifiable history for reference, particularly for trending. Businesses need to avoid vanity metrics and really focus on key metrics that correlate to better business outcomes. The goal is to not only do things right, but do the right things (and continuously improve doing that).
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What is Opposite of Strategy?

What is a "great" strategy? Is it one that helps the organization get a step closer to its vision? Maintaining its core purpose, but gaining competitive advantage in the market? Better ensuring long-term sustainability of the business? Ensuring all key/strategic stakeholders expectations are balanced and met? And based on these criteria, what are opposites of strategy?
Opposite of strategy = ad hoc, reactionary, unplanned. Each new project reinvents the wheel. Lessons are unlearned. Processes change on a whim: "let's shake things up." Simply put, strategy is how you plan to win. Strategy is about defining an overarching way to differentiate your plan of differentiators against your opponents to increase your ability to achieve your goal.
Being strategic is about “WHY” & “WHAT,” Being tactic is about “HOW”: Being "strategic" as being centered around "what" and "why," and being backed by a roadmap and plan of action that are informed by and have a solid grasp on the lay of the land to guide the perceived journey end-to-end. The "tactics" as being more centered around the "how," the individual steps and mechanics involved in the execution. Generally speaking, strategic decisions are why we do something, how we achieve the strategy through the choice of which methods is a tactical decision. Strategy: improve conversion of existing visitors. whether to use highly developed documentation or ethnographic research are tactical decisions. Choosing to move faster than competitors by iterating faster speed or "failing fast" is a strategic choice. But how do you do it through less documentation, use of whiteboards - is tactical. Being “strategic” and “tactic” is not necessarily opposite, but complementary with each other.
A strategy to compete for winning; while a "best practice"isn’t about winning, but trying not to get left behind. It is almost the antithesis of differentiation. The use of best practices is a tactical approach to solving a problem. When unique research data or user testing is not available, the application of best practices can confidently provide a stable, and common interaction experience for a user. Comparably, a strategic approach involving research, observation, heuristics and testing is what defines best practices and guides their implementation. Best practices are like heuristics, if you leave them out, you repeat known mistakes. When following a strategy, you would still need best practices to avoid being wrong just because you wanted to be different.
Is "standard" being opposed to "strategic"? Or is short term view opposite to long term strategic view? It is not "one size fits all," nor it asks to deviate from best practices.Therefore, a "one-size fits all" approach would be considered a lack of strategy because there is no differentiation. Or to put another way, strategy needs to strike the right balance between creativity and standardization. Standardization improves business efficiency and manageability from operational perspective, but creativity helps differentiate your business from competitors and drive winning position for long term strategic perspective.
Overall speaking, the absence of strategy is chaos, this is not necessarily always negative, how complex is your strategy depends on the nature of your business, and in which point you are on the business life cycle; to some startups, they may avoid over-complex strategy documentation management, because they are unlike traditional business, have little legacy and rigid process. But still, no matter you are a large industry bellwether, or a nimble startup, a good strategy is not always complex, regardless where you are, a comprehensive, but simple enough (not simpler) strategy will help you navigate through the journey, from chaos to order, avoid those negative opposite, also evolve the complementary factors,  and reach your vision steadily.
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Is Creativity the #1 Skill for the 21st Century?

Creativity is an outcome of a deep understanding of the patterns of thinking that underlies Systems Thinking.
Creativity is an inward process to produce the novel ideas and build unique value. Creativity is by definition an aspect to the emergent behavior that exist within us and the emergent traits that extend from us to the surrounding world. Creativity is infused with an inner cohesion, and comes from a vision of uniqueness. Is creativity the #1 skill for the 21st century, and does Systems Thinking stifle creativity or not? Systems Thinking wouldn’t stifle creativity. We humans tend to be very fixed in our definitions and Systems Thinking is a great candidate for such boundary-ing - yet in practice doesn't mean restricting anything. In fact, when used properly can enhance creativity to a great extent and push it to very high levels. It surely provides direction to think creatively. For example, simply by observing self organizing patterns of complex systems, one may get deep creative ideas about the most appropriate actions to be taken. Thinking systemically actually helps the resulting creativity and innovation by forcing yet more ingenuity, rigor and precision into the approach.

Leveraging Systems Thinking in harnessing innovation is all about taking a scientific approach for problem identifying and solving. It allows you to a number of things: embrace uncertainty, identify interconnections and interdependencies, understand flows or the lack of them, and identify business opportunities. Once you have a comprehensive vision of the system and its characteristics and dynamics, creativity is essential in order to propose: changes, improvements, disruptions, etc. Creative thinking, Systems Thinking and many other thought processes are all interlinked attributes we bring to our respective crafts in varying degrees depending on our mental models, perspectives, distinctions, etc, but how this manifest itself in each of us is unique, and then such interlinks often fuels new thoughts, perspectives, creativity and the imagination to spark into the fountain of new ideas and keep creativity flow.

Creativity is an outcome of a deep understanding of the patterns of thinking that underlies Systems Thinking. There are "common structures" that can be used for the purpose of creativity that are produced by combining different patterns of Systems Thinking. Perhaps this will help. A systems thinker without creativity ends up as a caretaker or administrator. A creative person without systemic thinking might lack of structure frame to keep focus. Systems thinking, and thinking in general, is more about discovery than about creativity, invention, and originality. Creativity to some extent, is the nature of seeing the patterns that already exist, and then being able to predict how they change, and sometimes manipulate them in a direction that fits our needs or that of our objective.

Systems Thinking keeps in mind a global or macro perspective. The true System Thinking, is about seeing the connections around us. The only way Systems Thinking would inhibit creativity is if the fullest global perspective is not kept in one's mind's eye when evaluating the sub-systems. If creativity is about solving problems in new and unusual ways, might systems thinking, inadvertently stifle creativity if it did not embrace the potential benefits of contribution from differential culture and class. Say, there is marvelous system of creativity at work around technology gadgets, but it is only a sub-component in the global system of creativity. An awareness of the macro-system whenever viewing the sub-system will prevent compartmentalization. For the 21st century, creativity would be more important since the world becomes more hyper-connected with fierce competition, products and service design is clearly moving from global standardization to more of culture based designs that satisfies customized needs of more distributed economies.

System Thinking can stifle creativity, when management intends to control or manipulate it too much. The problem comes, when proponents of one discipline or specialty in subset of ST try to overlay their methodology or criteria on another. Generally that is when more structured practices are forced on less structured disciplines. Learning from each other is not a problem, but forced participation is happening way too frequently. Now that creativity is seen as so desirable, management tries to artificially push it happen, or pull them out of fundamentally creative-unfriendly environments or to control them. And there are whole industries now based not on being creative but on "managing" creativity.

Creativity is the #1 skills for the 21st century, because it is the only force to not only keep the world move forward (with positivity), but also make the world delightful; it is the capability human intelligence still outbeats machine intelligence; and it’s the superior power to keep human race thrive, not just survive.
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To Celebrate the 2000th Blog Posting: How to Cultivate More “THINKINGNAIRES” in Digital Age

The digital " THINKINGNAIRES" are the ones who practice thought leadership to bring the world content richness and context intelligence.

Let’s celebrate the 2000th blog posting with a million page views only clicks away; let’s celebrate the content richness with digital fluidity; let’s celebrate thought leadership with dedication and humility. Let’s brainstorm how to build more “Digital Thinkingnaires” in 21 first century: Are they the “Imagineer” who can always bring the fresh perspectives and think differently? Are they the “Visioneer” who can digest, analyze and synthesize information & knowledge, and visualize the future clearly; Are they the Innovators who are creative and think alternative way to do things?  Or are they the “Change Agent” who can create synergy (people, capability, environment, etc.) that are greater than the sum of its parts? And is it the time to review, reflect, reimagine and reinvent digital leadership?

Leadership is about CHANGE: There are two 'types' of leadership: leadership to 'control' and leadership to 'change.' Perhaps the language gets in the way as we assume leaderships relates to command, control, organization, motivation, inspiration etc. Leadership as a word consists of "lea" and "ship." The root of "lea" is in the Sanskrit "yui,", it is also in "re-la-tionship," "intel-li-gence," "rea-li-ty," "re-li-gion," "li-aison," and "faci-li-tation." It is related to "connecting"; "ship" basically means "to create," "to make," "to come into being." So leadership implies "to create or to maintain connections." Leadership is an emergent phenomena connected with processes of grouping. It consists of a double interact, of which we usually perceive only one of the interactions ("leading" or "following"). The former - controlling based leadership requires a leader who understands the objective and is able to 'control' the actions of those who follow in order to ensure that the objective can be achieved. This sort of leadership is relatively short-lived, once the objective is achieved then it's over. The latter - Change oriented leadership requires a leader who has a vision for the future, but does not see this as an objective - part of the vision is that the vision itself grows and continually reinvents itself based on learning and experience. There are no real bounds - all avenues are sources of learning, and followers may come and go as they see fit - they may also become leaders in their own right either within the existing or emerging vision, or by establishing their own. Followers are there either because they are curious or because they 'believe' - motivation is intrinsic. The change model is the systems approach and makes far better use of the requisite variety of the whole system. Accept unpredictability, with adaptability to change under complex circumstances. It is a sustainable leadership involves an alignment of interests and a sharing of values.

Collective leadership is a digital trend: Collective leadership is a trend to encourage collective wisdom and enforce broad collaboration in digital age. Collective leadership occurs when people come together and mobilize human, cultural, and technological resources in ways that improve their ecosystem for the common good. It is an inherently inclusive approach to leadership because it asks individuals to cross boundaries of all types, as they commit to bidirectional learning, joint action, shared responsibility, and mutual accountability. Collective leadership represents a shift away from an exclusive focus on individual change agents and highlights the importance of more collaborative approaches. Collective leadership  brings together the wisdom and experience of complexity held by the individual or the organization into a whole, that has an understanding of complexity which exceeds the capacity of any one player or even the sum of all of the players to engage and dance with these common challenges. Einstein, noting that a problem cannot be solved with the same level of consciousness that created it. To address and remedy the global challenges facing us require all parts of the system to communicate without “getting lost” in translation and collaborate more seamlessly. We have to develop “collective leadership” at all levels of our systems in order for us to rise to the challenges facing us, to bring forth and harness the wisdom for the sake of our common good. This is high-risk, high-return work that asks us to be in serve something greater than our individual selves.

Leader as a “ladder” - The recursive nature of leadership: The group creates the leadership and the leadership creates the group. The ladder metaphor is interesting at first to get things started, someone has to climb the ladder and provide a vision of how things could be different and gather support, then the leader becomes the ladder so others can climb, and maybe take things in yet another direction, and then when it is going well, get rid of the ladder. The leader needs the wide vision of what is happening in the environment and then have the skills to mobilize the necessary resources in the right way to move the system towards a preferred alternative state. As a fact, leaders are like the "ladder": something enabling you to climb up. Usually "leader" is seen at the top of the ladder. So a leader should become a ladder enabling others to climb as well.

The paradoxical trait of digital leadership: Leadership is inherently paradoxical. What happens is that most people perceive only one part of a paradox: either you see somebody else as leader and remain unaware of the processes by which you've created "your" leader; or you see yourself as leader and cover up the processes by which you have been created as "their" leader. In both cases, leadership tends to become externalized, leadership is attributed outside yourself. Either as a result of what you may call "democracy" - the leader has to respond to "the people"; or as a result of self-calling or purpose discovery. These two points of view are complementary each other. These types of paradoxes are called "whole - whole"-paradoxes. Due to the complexity and ambiguity of digital businesses, the more paradox-pairs below will in fact strengthen effective leadership skills and enforce digital leadership disciplines:
-Opporutnity vs. Risk Management
-Logic vs. Creativity
-Centralize vs. Decentralize Blance
-Confidence vs. Humility
-Stability vs. Agility.

Digital leadership with contextual intelligence. Organizations and their leaders have a growing pool of stakeholders with a growing chasm among stakeholder values. This, accompanied by growing global diversity and constant pressure to innovate, gives rise to continually changing contexts. In turn, these phenomena require leaders to respond and adapt to quickly changing contexts. Contextual Intelligence is a construct that involves the ability to recognize and diagnose the plethora of contextual factors inherent in an event or circumstance, then intentionally and intuitively adjust behavior in order to exert influence in that context. The conceptual basis of contextual intelligence involves convergence of three abilities. 1) an intuitive grasp of relevant past events, 2) acute awareness of present contextual variables, and 3) awareness of the preferred future, interact so that the practitioner can exert influence and make appropriate decisions. The concept of contextual intelligence may help to delineate the implicit leadership skills referenced in the literature as the intangible element that keeps so many managers from reaching their leadership potential.
Speak digital leadership in “Systems Thinking” language: Leadership is about learning to manage the 'system,' in an 'open' manner, the way it is. We 'close' the boundaries of the system, so that less energy is transferred and therefore less changes happen in the system. We all try to 'close' the system, so to reduce its complexity. Under complex digital environment, we need to look at each situation individually and ask what leadership model is required, will it be emergent, will it self-organize, does it need a conductor-leader to orchestrate; an attractor-leader to consolidate, is a facilitator best, should it be distributed, no-one answer fits all situation. But when the system and leadership model are symbiotic/empathetic only then do things fall into place. A flexible leadership that moves and adapts as the circumstances change is absolutely vital. Leadership is about focusing attention and energy on the future to create a compelling, life giving, sustainable way forward. At the core good leadership makes things happen that wouldn't happen otherwise.  Systems Thinking, as a way of interacting with the environment is also a kind of leadership. Leadership is: Ability to vision; capacity to lead. Vitality to intuition; rationality to facts. Responsibility to understand; impressibility to counter. Accountability to people; adaptability to change. Incredibility to unique;sustainability to move. Justifiability to prove; sentimentality to decide. Facility to provide; mentality to serve. Sensibility to diagnose; suitability to justify.

Digital leadership is about balance: Digital leadership is about balance of "Yin and Yang," to avoid the pitfall of “extreme thinking” or group thinking. Digital accelerates the information flow and knowledge flow. Many leaders who have been with the same organization for decades, lack of “out of box” thinking, from outside the company or industry, which can improve creativity. People get trapped in "That's the way we've always done it mentality" and that slows progress. Thinking outside of box means you are at a continuous learning mode, also embrace critical thinking and creative thinking. When one leaves those thoughts and standards to seek additional knowledge and experience, they are stepping outside that box to unfamiliar territory. If an executive leader has the right amount of humility, he or she will embrace diversity of thoughts and pursue the ‘outliners’ viewpoint, and strike the right balance in order to make effective decisions. We all should broaden our points of interest and try new things to extend our thinking box. That leads to a better mutual understanding and more advanced society among all humans.
Leadership is all about future. You can become an influential digital “THINKINGNAIRE,”  if you have the full set of digital minds - the thought processes to connect, not divide; to think “out-of-box,” not too narrow-minded; to practice paradoxical thinking, not just see thing “black and white,” and to put constant effort to nourish these three innate human instincts: humility, curiosity and creativity, in order to inspire the positive changes and make significant impact in the organization and our society.
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Three Aspects of Talent Analytics

The goal of talent analytics is not to get the report built, but to capture business insight holistically.

The role of talent management is to put the right people in the right position at the right time for both maximizing business value and unleashing talent potential. Therefore, talent analytics is an important tool to analyze business/talent growth trend, practice data-based performance management, and do workforce planning more scientifically. But more specifically, how can you frame the right questions and solve them via data analytics, and how can you leverage technology to transform raw data into metrics?


A good place to start Talent Analytics is to questioning: Identify a problem and work from framing the right questions -- probably without spending a lot of money. For example you might go to leadership with the question "Do we know what impact retirement of top talent is going to have on our business in the next five years?" or "Do we know if the staff who are leaving are low performers or high performers?" If you can find a clear business question they care about, then you can come up with an approach on how to answer it. Once you've done the reasoning, then it will be natural for the firm to invest in analytics so that it can do more inquiries to dig through from both strategic level and tactical level: What is your strategy and data planning, and how will you use it? Who are going to be the customers or consumers of your reports and information, and what format do they need it? What data do you have, in what format, where the strengths and weaknesses and in what state is it in? What are some of the business problems or issues you are tackling? What is your IT infrastructure and what resources do you have and not have? What reports does the business need rely on? and what is your current state of development in analytics/evidence-based decision making? What is your budget? When having some clarity around these questions, you should be in a better position to judge whether you would like to utilize in-house BI systems, get an on-premise analytics tool and build internal data management capability? Or whether you would like to go down the Analytics as a Service cloud offering. They usually come with a suite of basic measures and more importantly be ready to deploy fit-for-purpose data framework to organize and access your workforce information.

The goal of talent analytics is not to get the report built, but to capture business insight holistically. The problem is far more broad and relates to the need to source, combine clean, structure and present an increasingly complex set of metrics and outcomes to more and more stakeholders in the organization. It is not just about getting the report built - it is about getting insight to the right user in a way that supports a better decision about talent life cycle. The basic data collected but not analyzed is futile; good low hanging fruit is attrition analysis; if you could establish a strong trend of attrition among a set of level that is crucial, you would get enough points for proposals to build you case for HR analytics. So delivering high level of impact to your organization is not about finding a way to replace the old analytics system. It is about looking for an enterprise level solution that cleans and combines data from multiple sources, supports the secure sharing of data, presents data in an "end user friendly" format, reduces the manual work required of the analytics team and ultimately delivers insight to your organization.

The key to predictive analytics is not just making predictions, but actually showing the real ROI from what you implemented. An important consideration for firms implementing HR analytics (whether using data that are "Big" or not) is how to appropriately document the business reasoning behind modeling decisions that drive outcome. There are too many variables to indicate how predictors can be used to drive future people processes; therefore, it will depend on context. For example, say you discover that the fixed personality traits neuroticism, extraversion and conscientiousness reliably predict employee performance in a certain role. Since personality is a relatively stable attribute, it is not useful for development because you can't easily modify personality through training or coaching etc. The practicality of analytics more lies in job fit, succession planning and recruitment. The first type of focus is on the prediction of 'fit for purpose,' as in attracting the right type of candidates in recruitment by researching the type of traits you need to succeed in a job. The other type of model is used for predicting the effect of an intervention, like introducing incentives for certain functions. Now the goal is changing the behavior of employees. In this type of model you need, is to establish a causal relationship before you can move forward. So before setting out on creating a model, you must agree on the general possibility of a ROI, it can not be just a academic hobby.

Overall, it is a journey to build a solid analytics capability in HR and in the whole organization. Regular discussions about HR data, reports, definitions and dashboards should go a long way in creating a sense of awareness. Having the data isn't worth anything if HR is not conscious enough to provide the context and interpretations of the data. There is a positive shift around the business and beyond, to build a culture of analytics and manage talent and business as a whole more effectively and intelligently.


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What should the Role of the CIO be In creating the Enterprise Strategy?

A high-strategic and high-mature CIOs will run IT as a business, to directly make impact on both business’s bottom line efficiency and top line business growth.

Modern CIO is perhaps one of the most paradoxical and sophisticated leadership roles in contemporary business today. As they are leading one of the most complex and dynamic functions of business, and managing one of the most intelligent groups of talent in the organization. What should the role of the CIO be in creating the enterprise strategy, and and how to define CIO leadership maturity?


CIO as IT leader needs to spend significant time in strategic planning, as IT strategy is integral element of corporate strategy. The CIO role should have the same responsibilities as the rest of the C level group with regards to creating the enterprise strategy. Do not confuse enterprise strategy with any specific field, especially in this case IT. Enterprise strategy is bigger than a department or a group. If the CIO comes only to speak about IT, he or she only acts as a functional manager, but in fact, the CIO is the most senior IT executive in an organization, and therefore must be at the enterprise strategy table for co-creating business strategy, with IT as an integral element, from start to finish and then onto being part of the execution plan, owning and driving IT enabled business goals as a result.

CIO should have a holistic view of the business from top business leaders’ perspectives and to provide the added value of technology. Now, Information Systems are impacting every business activities at the organization, CIO should have strong business knowledge to be able to communicate with the other executives to demonstrate that IT capabilities as strategic enabler of the business and CIO to be part of the executive team for articulating the business strategy. Because information is the lifeblood and technology is often the innovation disruptor, businesses demand IT more as a growth engine, rather than just a back office support function, to develop and innovate core products and processes, so should IT understand what it can offer to meet that demand and even surpass it by sparking business innovations made possible via technology push and information pulling together. CIOs as an IT leader must convey the vision and communicate IT value proposition thoroughly. Part of the challenge of being a CIO is determining what works where, and what works best for the business both from strategic and tactical perspective. CIO role as C-level is to contribute to the formulation of the business strategy where new trends of technology will provide strategic capabilities to the business that will enhance the competitive advantages of the organization. The objective of IT strategy is not just to be aligned with business strategy, but IT strategy is an integral part of business strategy. Uncertainty of the business ecosystem will be the real challenge to the CIO as to design an IT framework which has the complexity due to the technology trends at the different layers while maintaining its Agility for accommodating the dynamics of the business requirements.

The biggest challenge now is the increasing rate of change, and this isn't going to change! Strategy-execution is no longer linear steps, but a dynamic continuum.  IT services and solutions which enable strategy implementation, absolutely need to be able to respond in an agile way and make continuous improvement. CIOs as business strategist have to always “keep the end” in mind, focus on solving business problems, not just overcoming technology challenges. And high-mature CIOs will run IT as a business, to directly make impact on both business’s bottom line efficiency and top line business growth.


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Does Knowlege Fuel or Impede Imagination

When we truly become knowledgeable, then we become more aware of what we do not know and that should ideally fuel our imagination.
Imagination is a muscle. The more it is used and practiced the stronger it becomes. For some, imagination is their daily practice; for others, it’s just a sweet memory about their childhood. Is knowledge the source of imagination, or is it an impediment to imagination. Do you heartily agree with Einstein’s quote: “Imagination is more important than knowledge”?  


Imagination is lost without knowledge. Knowledge is the foundation of the imagination. We can use knowledge of the forces of the physics to guide us in the exploration of the earth or space, our imagination lets us dream of where we could go, knowledge helps us to understand how and what forces we are dealing with in our journey. Imagine what can be accomplished by increasing knowledge and applying it to what one has imagined. So a responsible use of knowledge is not an impediment to imagination. Knowledge should be helpful for imagination - it helps to widen the fields and the scope. It gives wings to the imagination. A great wealth of knowledge fuels imagination. This in turn becomes things which can be useful.

Knowledge is important, but openness is more difficult: Knowledge is important, but having a lot of knowledge about something can be a box that closes one's mind to innovation in that area. Openness is the most difficult thing to refresh your mind. And once you accept openness, the second most difficult thing is practicing it. The possible answer lies in the conscious application of what we know and at the same time stay open to the unknown, new thinking and knowledge can emerge. Curiosity stimulates a need to gain knowledge and knowledge is not just book knowledge, but intuitive knowledge, feeds the imagination. And imagination flows freely when supported by fluidity of thought and feeling. Children are a good example for having that kind of open-mindedness, curiosity, and joy for exploring. As Picasso famously said, " All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up". As we grow up, we appear to gradually lose the curiosity because we know; we also lose the courage because we are aware of the consequences. So, we stay within and restrain ourselves from going beyond. Thankfully, there are outliers, who take up the mantle of imagination and shine through. Should we then, look at, what stops knowledge from being an impediment to imagination.

Siloed or outdated knowledge is what leads to a decrease in imagination. Cross pollinating ideas, collaborating and sharing is what spurs innovation. Having knowledge is a good thing, debating, sharing exploring what to do with that knowledge and connecting disparate ideas that don't seem to fit together naturally will lead to true imagination! Our knowledge is always based on what's known. It's information that's been discovered. However, in order to take any entity to a new place, imagination has to be exercised to uncover and create something new. Knowledge can be useful in trying to understand if what's imagined can be achieved. But if there's a paradigm shift then the knowledge can be a hindrance. Often opinion is an impediment to imagination. The disconnect, comes when we lose our vision, the attitude, people close down conversations because their personal exploration of an issue has either been exhausted, or tic-tack-toe like, they have found no way of resolving what's before them and therefore believe nothing more can be done. "it can't be done," or "if it could be done, someone would have already done it"; both of these opinions could impede imagination. Do not let opinion deter your imagination. Instead, feed your imagination with science and let the mind design the answers you need for the future.

Einstein well said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." He's not saying knowledge is unimportant, we absolutely need knowledge. But knowledge is what is and what has been. While imagination is dynamic. It's anything you want it to be. So it's not the knowledge, it's what you do with that knowledge that can be creative, like using your knowledge of something, but in a new context. “Too much knowledge" in itself is not an impediment to imagination, but failure to recognize how vastly ignorant we are at the same time leads to an arrogance that will not admit new thinking. So, it’s not about, how much knowledge you acquire, it’s about what impact that knowledge has on you. Does knowledge trap you or, does it sets you free to soar. Imagination is then, a choice you make irrespective of what you know or, what you are aware of and knowledge is not an impediment, it becomes a springboard. When we truly become knowledgeable, then we become more aware of what we do not know and that should ideally fuel our imagination.
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