Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1429

How to Communicate more effectively to Enabling Changes

Change is inevitable, but majority of organizational change initiatives fail to achieve the expected result. Communication is the key, but how to communicate more effectively to enabling changes? Which methods connect best with organizations to support leadership and change, The more virtual your organization is through distance, location or shift, the more time you have to think about messages.What are they? How are they delivered? How do I make sure everyone gets the same message?

The thoughts are shared and interpreted between multiple entities. Decades of effort has been put into means of communicating vision and so on, but it obviously still remains a problem. As new technology has come along, it has provided yet more channels for communication. Even with new channels, people appear to struggle grasping the vision and views management want to get across. Perhaps, we can also say, it is all about SHARING. We can achieve an effective communication when we make sure our desired thought is interpreted between multiple entities and acted on in a desired way. To make sure a mission or a vision is acted in a desired way is to confirm your teams understanding of what you want them to understand. The process of building and sustaining trusting relationships has always been the effective vehicle of choice in working with people in whatever environment. Redundancy in communicating verbal messages is important as it offers an anchor/focus when stressed. You should not dismiss it as silly buzzwords.
Confirm your team’s understanding: Confirming understanding is the one that is always missed, and too many leaders wonder what happens. You can not make assumptions that the other person understood what was communicated by observing their body language without confirming with their understanding. Always confirm other people's understanding of what was communicated to save time and frustration in the future. As a leader, you must follow up to get feedback which can also be a way to confirm your teams understanding of your communication and to catch errors and correct them on time.
The reality of messages is they have to be "real." There is clutter and in today's world, it grows exponentially every day.Which ones connect best with organizations to support leadership and change? And what messages or vehicles have you used to cut through the clutter, clarify a leadership vision or unify organizations around a change? Change is always occurring even if we cannot see it or measure it. So much of what we COMMUNICATE to each other is non-verbal- actions speak louder than words. The verbal or text communication will fall on deaf ears if the intentions/actions/behaviors aren't in alignment with the vision, mission and intention of the person/organization delivering the verbal messages.
Trust: In the environment which lacks mutual trust, no art or science of communication is going to be effective in making people believe and accept the change initiative. Once you have trust, involve them in determining what the change is and how it can be done and then make sure the sacrifices they have to make are insignificant compared to the benefit they will receive. (obviously, in a large company, you cannot involve 100% of the people in how to make the change, but you can surely use some solid representation from each level of the organization).  It's all about communication, straight on, via any and every vehicle. Also, being open and available for dialogue is important. What people really want to know (in order) is: -How will this change benefit me?-Is this change worth the sacrifice I will have to make?-Can I be part of the change early on? (Meaning, "did you ask for my input?)-Do I trust the people leading the change?- Is it inclusive or exclusive?
Business will be more successful when they realize that one of their greatest strengths will be their change capability. Organizations just have to walk the talk (practice their change strategy), to figure out the big ‘HOW’ for connecting best with organizations to support leadership and change.  
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How can Talent Management Call for a Radical Change in an Emerging Digital Ecosystem

Digital business ecosystem is still evolving. The digital dynamic continues to evolve with increasing speed of change and rapid integration of business across the globe. Technology is the catalyzer of digital transformation, but people are at the center of change. Which role should talent management play in such emerging digital business ecosystem, how to shift from “Human Resource Management” to “Human Capital Investment,” and what kind of challenges it needs to overcome in order to lead change more proactively?
Talent Management should never just play a supportive role! For the time being, the Talent Management profession is not yet the champion of change, but rather the champion of conservation. Talent Management should determine its orientation more specifically in the forthcoming era. Is it business management oriented or "people" oriented? By finding the sincere answer, it will more clearly define the goals of this profession and there will be no more need to doubt about the new business settings. Talent Management, supposed experts of Human Capital, should play a leading role, but, until today, it still plays an administration role. Talent Management professionals are trained to be sensitive towards the integration of human needs with that of the operational needs of a highly insensitive corporate environment. Motivational aspects in the sometimes "Clinical Corporate Environment" had become a complex matter that leaves room for lots of research and mindset change…
Talent Management is throwing fresh challenges and calls for radical change to be embraced. Talent Management have adapted to the changing workforce in the changing workplace, and added additional best of breed talent and engagement systems to their existing core Talent Management, Payroll, Time systems creating Talent Management's own ecosystem. Adding employee performance data from business systems completes the 'data-set.' Now, Talent Management are still constrained trying to get insights from this ecosystem. However, the latest analytics systems collating all the data into one place, and searching it for insights, will really allow Talent Management to be proactive with the business manager and leader and play a wider role in the overall business ecosystem. many companies are still struggling with creating the right environment.
Talent Management is positioned to make a true impact to the bottom line with the shifts from managing human resource to investing human capital. Based on the interaction and feedback from this group, many Talent Management professionals have already risen to the occasion. There is nothing to be scary about the evolving trends in any field of knowledge. The newer thoughts, newer trends, newer knowledge are all that captivates learners with new curiosities to learn and quickly absorb and adopt so that it becomes easy for the coming generation to adjust to the needs of the changes necessitated with the evolving new thinking and trends.
Talent Management is and should be the agent of change. They need to be involved in all steps of change. Talent Management continually needs to show their value. Showing your value will show upper management and others in the organization that you are needed in-house. Talent Management cannot be an exception to any such change. The organizational process is slowly undergoing changes with the elapsing times. The reporting patterns, the communication channel, the scalar chains have already registered a unnoticed changes with the crepting in of team oriented working culture. The goals are narrowly subdivided within the groups to make achieving of bigger goals possible.Talent Management cannot afford to stay aloof in such fast changing pace of the trends. If it has to remain always relevant, it has to keep pace with changing knowledge, changing trends, changing approaches. This makes the talent management assignments more interesting and challenging and mind engrossing too.
Collaboration is the key of leadership success. Collaboration to resolve company’s biggest issues. Collaboration to address key challenges. Collaboration to support personal growth. Managers will be able to quickly learn and build on the ideation work of others.There a few challenges such as scalability and sustainability of the ecosystem. How to create impact and sustainable business model the real-time service integration? How to choose the system that offers seamless and fast connectivity, open platform architecture and secure and transparent operations.
Talent Management will have to change itself and adapt while all the time projecting absolute alignment with the top management, in order to make digital transformation more seamlessly. With decades of almost constant cultural and technological evolution, it's rewarding to see how today's delivery methods for employee learning and performance/support programs now better serve the participant, while still meeting the business constraints to ensure cost-effectiveness and feasibility. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

CIOs: Can you Play the Role at the Big Table

More and more organizations invite their CIOs to the big table for strategic discussions. The issue is that there are too many examples that CIOs (or other senior IT executives) have a "seat at the table," participate the conversations with non-IT executive decision makers, but they are often not given the "appropriate voice" in getting engaged in discussions, focused on the quest to leverage IT initiatives. CIOs, though you have a seat at the table, do you play the role and have the voice over the table? Formal meetings with individual stakeholders are essential, so are informal meetings. What should they focus on? How should they differ from Board meetings or governance meetings? What are some effective ways to get to the point where CIOs are considered a driver as well as enabler?
CIO's need to ask how IT can directly contribute to the organization's strategic direction. IT should position itself as an "enabler of corporate strategy and mission," rather than an "enabler of technology." IT needs to be considered a line of business, and not some back office, geek function. CIOs need to show the value of IT to the organization and to its customers reflecting back to the "enabler" concept. CIOs should always listen to and asking questions to the Line of Business Managers. Everything from hall meetings to chatting in the cafe or grabbing a cup of coffee is harvesting new information or fortifying existing information. By the time you meet with the BoD, you better have information in hand because at that level, it’s all about direction, strategy, cost effectiveness and customers. You should always perform research on hot topics, anticipate questions and formulate answers.
CIOs need to communicate effectively and tailor different audience. They just need to convince themselves, their teams and those around them that it is part of their role. The potential of IT is often underutilized and underappreciated because of a communication breakdown. IT needs to speak business, not technology,  and conversely others need to listen to what they have to say. A little translation on both sides would go a long way. The CIO needs to assume the role of  translator - orchestrator - leader, and encourage others to do the same. In many companies, the CIO is in a unique matricial position that oversights business processes and enables the understanding of the business as a whole. The CIO can then act as a business integrator. There are a couple of things: - Use of appropriate language: IT must speak the language of business in terms of project governance, management and performance metrics. Make every effort to simplify IT-speak.- Marketing of IT: Do you understand who your client segments are and what they need? Do you have a value proposition that is easy to understand and delivers what it promises?- Metrics and Change Management. It is not just about "on-time and on-budget". Do your clients want what you are delivering? How can you help with transition?
Formal and informal meetings are paramount to success, but they have to have a purpose and an excellent feedback loop. As already conveyed, appropriate communications is essential, certainly no tech talk; but what else? Why can't the CIO suggest, tell, convey and negotiate how IT can directly contribute to the organization's strategic direction? Why can't IT also be a driver of corporate strategy and mission? If they can't, how can they get to that position in their relationship? How can IT motivate their non-IT executives to want to get engaged and stay engaged? What are the things that should be done to be able to establish and maintain effective formal and informal meetings? Formal and informal meetings with individual stakeholders should focus on the stakeholder's needs and IT current and future initiatives that address those needs. On order to motivate non-IT executives, IT can:- Create internal announcement and discussions groups for news about technology applied in business.-Invite the executives to vendor and industry tech events, such as forums, presentations, expositions.- Create small pilot projects with direct sponsorship and involvement of the executives and let those executives present the results internally.- Allow semi-controlled rogue or shadow IT experiments.- Create IT steering committees focused on application areas and let non-IT executives control them. The business world is littered with examples of failure to analyze the market and competitors that they operate in. Non IT organizations need a competitive edge, a product or service that satisfies customer needs. Should that organization produce a product or service, competitors will have a response or something in the pipeline. The business must evolve.
CIOs, not only shall you have a seat on the table, more importantly, you need to have a voice, and play a significant role in co-creating business strategy, both through formal or informal communication, and tailor different audience. Preparing, listening, questioning and participating.  Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

From Systems Thinking Perspective: Is the Diversity of Languages a Good Thing, or Bad Thing?

Statically, “There are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world today. However, about 2,000 of those languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers; and there are an estimated 832 languages spoken by a population of around 3.9 million. (inforlease.com). And there are both alphabetic and symbol based languages as well. From Systems Thinking perspective, is the rich of languages the good thing or bad thing for the advancement of human society as a whole?
Language is the foundation to how thought processes are communicated giving to cultural differences. Solutions through systems thinking can only be enhanced because of diversity/differences in perspectives of reality. Human language is essentially a sound medium - one of the five senses. Different languages have evolved in isolation as people used different sounds to express the same thought. Thoughts are driven by our environments, both physical and socially. Consequently, languages are tied to unique cultures.
“Lost in translation” is indeed one of the root causes of mankind problems. Global communication would be more efficient if we had one language. There is a desire among unilingual people to have everyone using the same language at least for the Internet. But native language(s) is an integral part of our environment even if people grow up in a bilingual environment. But the caution is towards creating a monoculture wanting diversity. How do we push creativity through curiosity if we have nothing to challenge our thoughts besides the confines of one culture and one language? It perhaps leads us to homogenous thought systems thus against Systems Thinking’s goals and objectives.
The evolution of language: English is the current Universal business language globally right now because of the previous expanse of the British Empire. English as a language is made up of several languages including Latin, french, Scandinavian and it is constantly evolving. The English we speak today is different that the English being spoken 100 years ago. So language will continue to evolve and change to the needs of the people using it. We will likely end up with a modified universal dialect.
Systems Thinking is a cognitive process that is enabled by the understanding that interconnectedness is a condition of many, but not all, of one’s experiences. This understanding is to be independent of language. Every language provide the different window to see the world differently and intimately, also train us to think in different way via philosophical, sociological, psychological, and historical, etc. lense, and language is the root of world culture as well. So the world would be a mighty dull place if everybody spoke the same language. Technology does continue to make progress on ease of communication. Language is the art, as creative beings, we need to be supporting the revitalization of language thus preservation of cultures. Languages are not supposed to be the wall to isolate us, but the light spectrum to make the world more colorful.

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Three PoVs of Talent Competency

 Talent competency is the digital lenses through which people managers can assess talent in more strategic, analytical and creative way.
The word competencies, and thus true meaning of its use, comes from competent which means being capable of doing something. The knowledge life cycle is significantly shortened due to the increasing speed of changes, and a huge skill gap in the workforce needs to be filled due to the continuously updated technology and regulation, digitalization and globalization, etc. The forward-looking organizations are now looking for people that have the right minds, characters, attitudes, traits, or can demonstrate ability to do the work more innovatively, not just based on the previous experience, but through re-combinant capability and integral talent competency.



Assess professional traits on which competencies are built. The integrity and suitability of the competency is tested through traits such as critical thinking, creative thinking, attitude, passion, entrepreneurship, leadership, maturity and wisdom. etc. Competencies have been embraced around the world, as core practices, due to the huge skill gap among the workforce. If skills help organizations run today’s business, then competency can leap your organizations to the next level. If you narrowly focus on experiences solely, there will be some critical skills necessary to fulfill the essential functions of tomorrow still missing. If skills underpin performance, competency brings up potential. In a competitive 21st workplace, it has become necessary to develop strategic core competencies. one’s capable of providing and creating sustainable solutions. Developing core competencies is important. It's what defines how 'specialized generalist' executives are, and speaks volumes of how productive they can be. There are psychometric tests which help people to assess on their personality, habits and beliefs so that informed career decisions. Traits can also help in forecasting the future value of an executive. A diligent, logical, high-qualified with high EQ executive is the one who can be given greater responsibilities in future with accountability. In contrast, a wavering, non-sensible, poorly qualified executive would probably be treated differently.


Competency driven talent management encourages “Strengthening the strength, and competing for uniqueness”: To draw attention to the root meaning of the word, "competency," which probably comes from competition, to compete to be the best among the best. However, the talent mantra needs to shift from “compete for best of everything,” at industrial age to “compete for uniqueness via strengthening the strength,” at digital era, in order to encourage authenticity, purpose driven talent development and management, and discourage negative competition or unprofessionalism. Amongst critical thinking, creative thinking, as well as many thinking capabilities, attitude, entrepreneurship, leadership,, and passion, which is/are more important? Probably all are important. Competencies are interrelated with the traits and experience. Neither one overshadows the other, they complement each other. And this is where the differentiation and selection algorithm comes in, and talent analytics can play an important role in people management.


Well define the set of competency to tailor your organizational needs: So it has become necessary to develop strategic core competencies for digital professionals:All of the competencies seem important, but the main thing that you should put into the consideration is that does your company really need such core competencies and on what level if applicable. It always depends on the company culture, position requirements and type of industry the company works for. Be cautious with only using core competencies. And by "core," assuming that means organizational-wide competencies. Employees serve in various roles throughout your organization, and each role has job-specific competencies that need to be understood and analyzed before you can begin developing different "talent management" processes and systems. This is where position analysis comes into play. As talent managers, first ensure you understand what the competencies are. Once you understand the competencies, you publish it in doc or website, so employees can view them along with language that describes what each competency is and how it relates to the expectation of the organization. There are also examples of what each competency looks like in action. The HR Partners trained senior leaders first to get their buy in into the organizational change, and then the training managers with tremendous support from their leader. After the training, you have to continuously speak the language, especially when there are performance gaps. This will help leaders learn to speak the language as well.
People are always the most invaluable asset in any organization, talent competency is the digital lenses through which people managers can assess talent in more strategic, analytical and creative way. HR will see the urgency of being innovative- because the frequent digital disruption is inevitable and ideally, it should be common practice for talent managers and top leaders to set the course for people management and business’s long term growth and digital transformation in more systematic way.






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Three PoVs of Tant Competency

The word competencies, and thus true meaning of its use, comes from competent which means being capable of doing something. The knowledge life cycle is significantly shortened due to the increasing speed of changes, and a huge skill gap in the workforce needs to be filled due to the continuously updated technology and regulation, digitalization and globalization, etc., the forward-looking organizations are now looking for people that have the right minds, characters, attitudes, traits or can demonstrate ability to do the work more innovatively, not just experience.


Assess professional traits on which competencies are built. The integrity and suitability of the competency is tested through traits such as critical thinking, creative thinking,  attitude, passion, entrepreneurship, leadership,maturity and wisdom. etc. Competencies have been embraced around the world, as core practices, due to the huge skill gap among the workforce. If skills help organizations run today’s business, then competency can leap your organizations to the next level. If you narrowly focus on experiences solely, there will be some critical skills necessary to fulfill the essential functions of tomorrow still missing. So if skills underpin performance, competency bring up potential. So it has become necessary to develop strategic core competencies for digital professionals: In a competitive 21st workplace, it has become necessary to develop strategic core competencies. one’s capable of providing and creating sustainable solutions. Developing core competencies is important. It's what defines how specialized generalist executives are, and speaks volumes of how productive they can be. There are psychometric tests which help people to assess on their personality, habits and beliefs so that informed career decisions. Traits can also help in forecasting the future value of an executive. A diligent, logical, high-qualified with high EQ executive is the one who can be given greater responsibilities in future with accountability. In contrast, a wavering, non-sensible, poorly qualified executive would probably be treated differently.
Competency driven talent management encourages “Strengthening the strength, and compete for uniqueness”: To draw attention to the root meaning of the word, "competency," which probably comes from competition, to compete to be the best among the best. However, the talent mantra needs to shift from “compete for best of everything,” at industrial age to “compete for uniqueness via strengthening the strength,” at digital era, in order to encourage authenticity, purpose driven talent development and management, and discourage negative competition or unprofessionalism. Amongst critical thinking, creative thinking, as well as many thinking capabilities, attitude, entrepreneurship, leadership,, and passion, which is/are important? Probably all are important. Competencies are interrelated with the traits and experience. Neither one overshadows the other, they complement each other. And this is where the differentiation and selection algorithm comes in, and talent analytics can play an important role in people management.

Well define the set of competency to tailor your organizational needs: All of the competencies seem important, but the main thing that you should put into the consideration is that does your company really need such core competencies and on what level if applicable. It always depends on the company culture, position requirements and type of industry the company works for. Be cautious with only using core competencies. And by "core," assuming that means organizational-wide competencies. Employees serve in various roles throughout your organization, and each role has job-specific competencies that need to be understood and analyzed before you can begin developing different "talent management" processes/systems. This is where position analysis comes into play. As talent managers, first ensure you understand what the competencies are. Once you understand the competencies, you publish it in doc or website, so employees can view them along with language that describes what each competency is and how it relates to the expectation of the organization. There are also examples of what each competency looks like in action. The HR Partners trained senior leaders first to get their buy in into the organizational change, and then the train managers with tremendous support from their leader. After the training, you have to continuously speak the language, especially when there are performance gaps. This will help leaders learn to speak the language as well.
People are always the most invaluable asset in any organization, talent competency is the digital lenses in which talent managers can assess talent in more strategic and creative way. HR will see the urgency of being innovative- because the frequent digital disruption is inevitable and ideally, it should be common practice for talent managers and top leaders to set the course for people management and business’s long term growth and digital transformation in more innovative way.





Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

How to Measure Changes

We can only manage what we measure. Is Change so hard because it’s so hard to measure Changes? Organizations have so much difficulty measuring change for a variety of reasons; miscommunication, hidden agendas, unclear goals and mission, poor leadership, "doing the same things over and over and expecting different results." Change is a process with known/ controllable and unpredictable/unknowable variables. Change is ALWAYS happening around us at work and outside work. Perhaps the difficulty in measuring change management is that the very thing we are measuring is changing. There is an inherent oxymoron in the term change management. We want people to change, and manage/control at the same time. That's like trying to drive with your foot on the brake and the accelerator at the same time.
One reason for such difficulty would be an inadequate measuring system: How do you design metrics to measure what changes and how these changes are measured? What are the relevant metrics and how can they be quantified and validated? Oftentimes, the organization may not have the systems and structures in place prior to implementation to actually monitor and track the change. There is a significant lag between getting these systems operational, having enough data to establish a baseline, and then actively monitoring change. Measuring change involves first accurately identifying where you are now. Then, clearly identifying where you want to be once the change is complete. Both require the necessity to be brutally honest and to establish clear, understandable, and easily calculable metrics. You must also have yardsticks along the way at regular intervals to accurately measure progress. Difficulties to measure change are a reflection from: 1st, lack of planning and 2nd, lack of clarity. if you know what your change is expected to bring then you'll know what to measure before the change is implemented. In fact the act of change is to improve or modify something, therefore you should already know what is not working. hopefully a measurement. If a change is implemented with no clarity then you are doing a change just to change. and if you are not clear on why you are changing then measure change will become difficult. The majority of employees do not like change not because they do not like it, but because they do not understand it. Two things to take into account: Organizational Change is a complex HUMAN process, so until you have systemic structures to manage it, you should wait for relevant measurement. Management Science and Organizational Development has failed to measure change process, and the main source of that, is the lack of multidimensional theory based assessment instruments.

A good balanced scorecard encompasses the key strategic goals and the drivers thereof: That is to say, a good balanced scorecard measures key strategic measures along with the things that drive those measures. Getting management to sit down and create a good balanced scorecard takes skill--often they want to include tactical and operational measures. Think of the heads-up display on a fighter pilot's visor--there are just a few of the key gauges displayed there--just the ones that the pilot needs most to steer the ship. Same with a scorecard. It can be most helpful if you use a "balanced scorecard approach" where you have a baseline that is: either developed by doing a survey, using benchmark data, historical data or best estimation of 4-6 change categories like communications index, training scores, employee engagement, etc. Then you create a scale showing best case up to 10, from the baseline, and worst case to 1, with a weight on each
More precisely you are leveraging balance scorecard in measuring the outcome of the change. That metric needs to be SMART, so people can see what the outcome will look like throughout their transition. Second, there should be a consideration for a balance scorecard that measures the progress of the milestones you want to achieve during the change transition, this keeps people focused. A balanced approach may be sensible as they move away from providing towards commissioning services; looking at finance, working in partnership with others, contracting services out, building relationships that can help support new ways of offering services. How do you measure these in a meaningful way? Perhaps the answer lies in using a range of different tools rather than relying on a single method.  A Balanced Scorecard is a great idea, however, success of that scorecard will be determined by the components of the scorecard and how meaningful those components are to the successful implementation of the change. Change Impact Analysis and Business Readiness are two key processes that need to conducted to give a person a glimpse of what to measure.
The real key to change management is the internal process humans go through in transition. Change is external; transition is internal. When companies learn how to tap into and pay attention to employees' transition process, they'll have a richer perspective of where they are along the successful change management curve. End state goals, and milestones along the way will help measure external change. Conversations and connections between leadership, management and employees will help monitor internal/transition which equals buy-in, adoption, behavior change, etc. Managers as coach must use powerful questions and presence with their employees to tune into the transition process. Change management succeeds or fails inside each employee and their transition. Perhaps the most challenging area in which to measure change is with respect to changing a culture. The Barrett Values Index, is a quantitative, qualitative and inclusive measurement tool for gauging organizational culture. It centers on three simple questions asked of all employees: (1) what are your personal values (2) what do you see as the company's current values, and (3) what do you believe the future company values should be? You can see how the gaps will surface quite clearly. Efforts can then be designed to minimize the gaps. And as the culture strengthens, strategic alignment happens as a by-product. So perhaps directing energy and attention at measuring and improving culture will yield synergistic results in desired change. The research also clearly indicates that the most carefully crafted and well intended change strategies fail in the execution phase if culture is weak, because shared values and buy-in at all levels are misaligned. Or using a synthesis of Socio-Technical Systems (STS) Analysis to measure change-readiness against the contexts of Goals, People, Processes/Procedures, Infrastructure, Technology and Culture. Early interventions produce a quantitative comparison for plant managers to easily view their plant's strengths and weaknesses.
One approach is to develop a business process improvement initiative and incorporate change into it. Senior managers are more receptive to this because the benefits are more visible. It's very appropriate to use listening to people as a measurement, but with every measuring system (including listening to our stakeholders) an element of calibration is needed - is there a possibility that the measurement itself can be affected by how the listener perceives the change? Whatever the measurement system is, it needs to be consistent, repeatable and as unbiased as possible. It's not an easy question and maybe we should only put as much effort into measuring change as the organisation needs reassurance about implementing the change
Prior to taking the journey of change, it’s important for leaders to understand an organization’s readiness and competencies to successfully achieve the desired goal  and result. As to the issue of accomplishing change, that requires real management and communication skill, the most important of which is convincing everyone involved of the necessity for the change and how they and the organization will be better off. Be cautious about applying the discipline of measurement to change likely makes success more difficult to achieve. Change outcomes are much more simple to measure, but by definition come further down the line. What is much more difficult to get to grips with is the change that a growing number of people over time need to go through to create the environment for change outcomes to materialize. Try less hard to impress senior leadership by providing evidence that the change programme is working - focus more on engaging more and more people as advocates and building momentum. Doing so from the so called bottom up is immensely powerful and if senior leadership can be persuaded to be patient, then they will see the outcomes they seek - but only once they have got there. Adopting this kind of approach perversely also allows you to spot failure earlier as well - the sense that change will not happen manifests itself very early and doesn't need measures to tell you. By cultivating people with a growth mindset and instill upon them with the "why" and "know-how" of the change initiatives, companies will see a more successful change implementation, measure, follow up, and sustaining power. if corporate can innovate and scale up with innovative new business lines to create an opportunity for growth of staff that were up for disposal due to the efficiency of competitive business, people would be more positive.
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How to Leverage Systems Thinking in Complexity Management

 Systems Thinking by definition is a cognitive process (thinking).

Systems Thinking is the way of thinking to understand holistically the interconnections and inter-dependencies between parts, and Complexity Management is the way to deal with complex objects to steer the system in a desired direction. Strategically and technically, how to leverage Systems Thinking in complexity management?

Systems thinking is a way of understanding complexity; to transposing another term, 'systems,' emphasis on 'a way.' It is a descriptive term for an object or an experience. Systems Thinking by definition is a cognitive process (thinking). A system is a a set of interdependent components forming an integrated whole. Each system is delineated by its spatial boundaries and described by its structure, purpose, and operations. Systems Thinking is that it is a cognitive process interprets many, but not all, experiences as consisting of interconnected components directed towards some common purpose or goal. One understanding of complexity is that it is description of the composition of many, but not all, experiences as consisting of often intricately interconnected components around some factor of commonality. If such understanding of systems thinking and complexity are correct, then Systems Thinking is a way of understanding complex objects.

Complexity principles are in the realm of Systems Thinking: But not all Systems Thinking principles are in the realm of complexity. At the most mechanistic end of Systems Thinking, it's still about cause and effect. Complexity is about effect-and-effect, as illustrated in the Butterfly Effect. Systems work toward some common purpose or goal of the system, often including the continuing viability of that system. This is not the same though as Systems Thinking seeks to define an ideal future (culture), and then define strategies to “close the gap” without first understanding the system itself, understanding the dynamics of a system, what happen if you don't touch it, don't regulate it.Systems thinking includes reductionist methods and good science, reductionist methods such as systems engineering.

Systems thinking is what you are doing while you are managing complexity. As such and in certain contexts where it seems appropriate to build simple and systematic structures, the Systems Thinker will do so with his/her eyes open to the relationships interwoven surrounding the system, whereas the unsystematic thinker is blind to the chaos he/she creates in his/her wake. Systematic Thinking is about the collection of valid information. Systems Thinking is about turning information into knowledge. Complexity Management is about using knowledge to move energies in the pursuit of survival.
Digital business ecosystem is complex and hyper connected, Systems Thinking, is not a “nice to have,” but must have individual and business (collective thinking) capability to manage it more effectively, it helps leaders and managers breakdown the silo to understand the interconnectivity of business functions, also helps business professionals to see the trees without missing the forest. It is both the principle and philosophy to run a modern organization.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Business Value of Risk Management

You cannot be managing risk, or for that matter, build a risk management process without first understanding the "business value of risk management."
Digital brings unprecedented opportunity and risk for organization today, it becomes one of the significant management disciplines to deal with them effectively. What is the business value of risk management in tangible terms? What is the bottom line impact of risk management, specifically enterprise and operational risk? What real, tangible value does enterprise and operational risk management frameworks and processes really bring?

In-depth understanding about business value of risk management: Quite simply, you cannot be managing risk, or for that matter, build a risk management process without first understanding the "business value of risk management." Since there are numerous value propositions, it’s the ones selected that influence how risk management gets done. The value could be in better management decisions, improved operations, greater resilience, improved reputation, increased confidence in management, etc. Risk management is very useful for achieving the business results. In a sense, if the business does not use it, then all the good work done by it so far can be tarnished by a silly mistake which can turn out to be a costly affair. So programs carried out in field should be able to achieve highly tangible benefit.

Integrating risk management into operation management: The discipline factor of integrating risk management into the everyday business model helps to move the organization a couple of steps forward in business excellence. But, as always, the challenge of managing human change and adoption is tough, and those firms that can accomplish this feat will have the ability to tackle other challenges. It is important to identify vulnerability in the control (via risk assessment, after action, or table top) and determine the potential range of consequences ($, business interruption, reputation, etc.). Estimating the threshold of loss potential vs. testing for capability of detection and response makes for a key measure of control effectiveness.

Regarding internal control systems, the key controls in the organization address multiple risks at the same time for practicability reasons. The controls help bring the risks down to an acceptable level. It is worthwhile looking at the Internal Controls and mapping them back to your risks. If you find that you can't map a particular control to a risk, then you should question the purpose of the control. There should be a many-to-many relationship with the risks and the controls. One control will be linked to many risks. And one risk will be linked to many controls. You can increase the sophistication of the model by weighting the controls, allowing to give greater or lesser importance to a particular control’s effects on the management of the risk. Controls are not free-floating agents across the process; they are there to serve a purpose which is to ensure that the process operates in a desired way or to let us know when it isn’t. The controls need to manage the risks inherent within the process. When look at the Risk - Control relationship, you need to remember that they are independent variables working together.

By understanding the business value of risk management, the approach to manage risk is to look at the effectiveness of the risk management strategy, not just its financial value, the premise of trying to quantify this value in a monetary sense is only relevant to the extent you want to evaluate options to mitigate the identified risk. Quantifying the benefit in monetary terms will then assist in an NPV calculation of the benefit-cost of alternative actions. The reason you implement a risk management strategy (from risk mitigation to risk intelligence) is to manage the risk and opportunity as well. If the focus is just on assessing financial value or cost, the broader strategic risks will never be properly addressed! Hence, risk management is not just a tactical task or practice, but a core business capability to run today's overcomplex businesses.


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Is Employee Engagement only about Productivity

Any sort of engagement initiative needs to be authentic as opposed to manipulative and have the goal of creating a win-win outcome for all shareholders.
Every organization declares people are the most invaluable asset. However, statistically, about 70% of employees are not engaged in their work, It becomes the very challenge for talent managers to overcome, and to dig to the BIG WHY, what are the principles and practices to manage today's multi-generational, multi-cultural and multi-devicing digital workforce, and is employee engagement only about productivity?

It all depends on the workplace culture. There will be better results if it's a place where people look forward to coming to work, know that they are appreciated, have work that interests and challenges them and are trusted. So shifting a team's focus to bigger picture objectives is key and that managers are the owners of this messaging. But to do so effectively requires an identification and clearing of current roadblocks that have so far hindered their engagement. Leadership is about people - you can't lead numbers or dollars. Consequently, psychology, sociology and philosophy can inform senior executives, managers and supervisors. That being said, multidisciplinarity must be applied within the context of the values of the organization. Just because an assessment is a valid and reliable means of some of what drives human behaviors doesn't mean it fits within an organization's culture or even should.

Employee engagement is important to drive competitive advantage: It’s about employees "willing to give discretionary effort, wants to stay, and is always looking for ways to improve individual and team performance." If you want your employees to be engaged - you want to define that - you're going to first need to acknowledge the skepticism, truly understand it, and at least attempt to do something about it. The employee benefits by increasing revenue and becoming more competitive. The same thing applies to increasing performance, an issue totally separate from engagement. The employer's revenue benefits when performance improves and the employee benefits because becoming a better performer makes the employee more marketable.

Yes, employee engagement is about productivity. Employees becomes engaged and maintain a level of engagement as an outcome for a variety of reasons. Two that readily spring to mind is that humans do have self-interest, and we are also interested in others. How well these interests are satisfied in the workplace does affect productivity. This does not mean they should be met in the same way they are in other circumstances. How we express interest in ourselves and others is contextual. Those who elicit high performance from others understand productivity is the outcome of how you engage an employee or a group of employees. And it is how they engage each other. There must be some compelling reason of personal interest for a person to go to work, and there must be reasons for staying and delivering high productivity. The greater the number of reasons, and the more important the reasons are, the higher the drive is for the employee to perform in a way that leaders, management and peers value. So why not take a balanced approach, one that is based on maximal mutual benefit, respect, and empathy? Why not concentrate on building competencies for the individuals’ benefit first; they will ultimately spill these competencies for benefit of others, willingly or not. A flower does not spread its incense for the benefit of the bees.

Governance is at the heart of this topic. And who is better to lead the way for others to follow if not HR. Firstly, look at what governance structure you have in place that support engagement and innovation, which in turn will lead to agile operating practices. Consideration also must be given to the difference between "cost" and "investment. Professional development that is really needed is an investment and they must consider the cost of NOT doing the training as well. The best training is participatory, involving and support must be given for the changes coming out of that experience. For innovation, consideration must be given to the different types of thinking styles for decision making and problem solving and cooperation of the team to work together. It may sound complex, it’s all about solving the employee engagement puzzle via digging into mind level.

Leveraging the effective technology to engage employees: A technological point of view that the amount, sensitivity, and capability of the available tools for engaging people is improving steadily. There is ever greater ability to create engagement around very specific goals, such as employee retention, talent acquisition, benefits administration, wellness, or multi-generational workforce facilitation. For technologists, "engage" seems to mean to capture end users' attention and then present various things to make sure the end user is getting maximum benefit from the content and application. An aspect of this approach is that we often truly believe we are presenting a benefit to the end user, if only we can learn a bit more about the user in order to personalize the message. We expect that greater personalization leads to better understanding and application in real life. Plus, the ability for people to self-assess in well-built hybrid working environments, and for early "warning signs" to be identified across the board - opens many doors for pre-emptive and prescribed interventions.
Is employee engagement only about productivity? It is sort of a trick question, it is an attempt to tease out what is core to any business and organization - productivity, but productivity itself is affected by a myriad of factors. There are many different views of employee engagement. The very goals are to well align corporate goals with employees’ career goals, encourage talent growth, create synergy by putting the right talent at the right position, invite employees to brainstorm and contribute for either strategy or innovation, and explore the best practices and next practices for building an engaged and high performing digital workforce. Any sort of engagement initiative needs to be authentic as opposed to manipulative and have the goal of creating a win-win outcome for customers, employees, managers, shareholders and society at large. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu