Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1432
June 4, 2015
Is Intuitive Decision Making Good or Bad
Intuition matters, but pay more attention to the unconscious bias.
The human brain can process huge amounts of information unconsciously without it ever rising into consciousness. This is why intuitive decision making can be powerful and should not be underestimated. Herbert Simon and Daniel Kahneman state intuition is recognition. Your unconscious recognizes what you like or what you have practiced many times. It is good to go with the intuition of a firefighter who has fought countless fires. It is also good to go with the intuition of a physician who has treated thousands of cases or done thousands of similar operations. However, it is not so good to go with intuition when it is an excuse not to put in the effort to pay attention to detail and think carefully. And the outcome was, if the problem is familiar, and a quick response is needed, intuition works well. They have well-developed heuristic models, etc. that have been trained in similar situations. However, what’re the potential pitfalls for intuitive decision making, and how avoid them?
The problem with intuitive decision making is that it can seldom be quantified and so analyzed. People rely on their gut if they are trained or experienced, first responds don't have time to weigh all the factors in a decision, and are trained to make fast decisions. But if you are in an unfamiliar setting would you step back and look for facts and factors and try to create or consider more alternatives before deciding? Statistically, the majority of normal humans make their decision based on intuition.They then quickly check the decision against (confirmation bias) "facts." This boils down to how much priming you have received into the subconscious. And it takes some serious mental training and mindfulness to ascertain the amount of priming and confirmation: bias + complacency you need to deal with before seeing a clear picture and arrive to a somewhat unbiased decision. In team or social setting, 'groupthink' can be extremely pervasive and a group's intuitive decision making should be taken with extreme caution. Also intuitive decision making can just be plain wrong! In many situations the human brain is very poor at spotting 'differences' whilst being much better at spotting 'similarities.' For this reason, if something has always happened a certain way in the past, you are much more likely to assume it will happen the same way again, which may well not be the case because you have not noticed what has changed.
Intuition matters, but pay more attention to the unconscious bias: People have different ways of accessing their intuition and “knowing” when they have made a good decision. On a personal level, there may be a number of factors involved, possibly just outside of your awareness, that let you know when a decision is right for you. Think about a time where you made a decision that you were happy with. Decisions have to be 'provable' in order to meet the demands of accountability for multi-faceted purposes and also to establish some attitudinal issues. Challenging those who refer to their 'gut' instincts often goes some way to revealing their unconscious bias. Sadly, it is true that if we believe in our choice, we increase the probability they will work out because this could also be a matter of self fulfilling prophecies and the ever-decreasing spiral of stereotypes. Check if there is a link between ‘bias’ and ‘perception’ in terms of how we make decisions and build trust. Intuition is one element for our unconscious process which is created out of our distilled experiences; it is often used when there is a high level of uncertainty. Meaning, there is little precedent to go on, when the ‘risks‘ are less predictable and when “facts” are limited. These facts don’t lead you in one solution, data is of little use, when there are several plausible outcomes/ uncertainties. This intuition is based on our risk tolerance for ambiguity and our way of thinking developed by our biases. So this raises the question of what is ‘rational’ for making decisions, given that we have a tendency to construct simplified models that extract the essential features from our experiences without capturing all complex reasoning. It would be interesting to do further research on how we use ‘perception’ based not only on the actual ‘risk,‘ but on how we understand it or believe it to be ? How we perceive, analyze the risk, connect this with our biases, and combine it with a rational analysis with intuition to make a decision would be an interesting problem to solve.
Asking the right questions and collecting evidence is still key to make the right decisions. Of course, you gut feeling will play a role, but by asking simple questions like: how do you know, what evidence do you have, is it your opinion or a fact, makes decisions less biased. There’s even more pitfalls here. Research / investigation / learning is partly about creating a hypothesis, and then seeking to test it by seeking falsifying information. If you go looking for supporting information, and not conflicting information, you may produce supporting arguments, but you probably haven't increased the probability of making the right decision. So before using your intuition, it is good to ask a couple of questions: -Is there structure to the problem? That is, should there be a pattern, even if it is too complicated to make out.-Have I had an opportunity to learn? Am I truly an expert here?-In learning, did I get good feedback? Too often we get feedback based on outcomes, not our thinking process.
More work needs to be done on creating a healthy environment for intuition to be valued and respected. What might be identified as "intuition" is probably subconscious rapid assessment through a decision tree to come up with an appropriate and timely response to an unfolding situation. That is the ideal outcome for training certain professions with an "automatic" (intuitive) appearing reaction. If you have time, whether or not you are familiar with the problem, a more analytic approach works well. The reason that you get better answers, even for familiar problems, is that you consider more alternatives and you spot "extra factors" for this particular decision, that may not be taken into account in your heuristic model. You can also uncover unconscious bias If you are not familiar with the problem, and you need a quick decision, you're doomed!
There is no one size fits all. The variation in decisions to be made vary tremendously across the developmental spectrum. Time lines and content play havoc with decisions to be made. Intuition has its place in decision making, but clarify your gut, breaking the "problem down," rather than making one big "gut decision," can reveal inappropriate bias, and creates an audit trail. Framing the right questions, and strike the right balance between data and intuition, are all crucial to make effective decisions.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The problem with intuitive decision making is that it can seldom be quantified and so analyzed. People rely on their gut if they are trained or experienced, first responds don't have time to weigh all the factors in a decision, and are trained to make fast decisions. But if you are in an unfamiliar setting would you step back and look for facts and factors and try to create or consider more alternatives before deciding? Statistically, the majority of normal humans make their decision based on intuition.They then quickly check the decision against (confirmation bias) "facts." This boils down to how much priming you have received into the subconscious. And it takes some serious mental training and mindfulness to ascertain the amount of priming and confirmation: bias + complacency you need to deal with before seeing a clear picture and arrive to a somewhat unbiased decision. In team or social setting, 'groupthink' can be extremely pervasive and a group's intuitive decision making should be taken with extreme caution. Also intuitive decision making can just be plain wrong! In many situations the human brain is very poor at spotting 'differences' whilst being much better at spotting 'similarities.' For this reason, if something has always happened a certain way in the past, you are much more likely to assume it will happen the same way again, which may well not be the case because you have not noticed what has changed.
Intuition matters, but pay more attention to the unconscious bias: People have different ways of accessing their intuition and “knowing” when they have made a good decision. On a personal level, there may be a number of factors involved, possibly just outside of your awareness, that let you know when a decision is right for you. Think about a time where you made a decision that you were happy with. Decisions have to be 'provable' in order to meet the demands of accountability for multi-faceted purposes and also to establish some attitudinal issues. Challenging those who refer to their 'gut' instincts often goes some way to revealing their unconscious bias. Sadly, it is true that if we believe in our choice, we increase the probability they will work out because this could also be a matter of self fulfilling prophecies and the ever-decreasing spiral of stereotypes. Check if there is a link between ‘bias’ and ‘perception’ in terms of how we make decisions and build trust. Intuition is one element for our unconscious process which is created out of our distilled experiences; it is often used when there is a high level of uncertainty. Meaning, there is little precedent to go on, when the ‘risks‘ are less predictable and when “facts” are limited. These facts don’t lead you in one solution, data is of little use, when there are several plausible outcomes/ uncertainties. This intuition is based on our risk tolerance for ambiguity and our way of thinking developed by our biases. So this raises the question of what is ‘rational’ for making decisions, given that we have a tendency to construct simplified models that extract the essential features from our experiences without capturing all complex reasoning. It would be interesting to do further research on how we use ‘perception’ based not only on the actual ‘risk,‘ but on how we understand it or believe it to be ? How we perceive, analyze the risk, connect this with our biases, and combine it with a rational analysis with intuition to make a decision would be an interesting problem to solve.
Asking the right questions and collecting evidence is still key to make the right decisions. Of course, you gut feeling will play a role, but by asking simple questions like: how do you know, what evidence do you have, is it your opinion or a fact, makes decisions less biased. There’s even more pitfalls here. Research / investigation / learning is partly about creating a hypothesis, and then seeking to test it by seeking falsifying information. If you go looking for supporting information, and not conflicting information, you may produce supporting arguments, but you probably haven't increased the probability of making the right decision. So before using your intuition, it is good to ask a couple of questions: -Is there structure to the problem? That is, should there be a pattern, even if it is too complicated to make out.-Have I had an opportunity to learn? Am I truly an expert here?-In learning, did I get good feedback? Too often we get feedback based on outcomes, not our thinking process.

There is no one size fits all. The variation in decisions to be made vary tremendously across the developmental spectrum. Time lines and content play havoc with decisions to be made. Intuition has its place in decision making, but clarify your gut, breaking the "problem down," rather than making one big "gut decision," can reveal inappropriate bias, and creates an audit trail. Framing the right questions, and strike the right balance between data and intuition, are all crucial to make effective decisions.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Published on June 04, 2015 23:09
June 3, 2015
Systemic-ness of the Agile
Systemic-ness of agile means to leverage Systems Thinking not only in the context of individual project, but also to be considered at the enterprise level.
"Being agile" considers the entire enterprise, not just the project. "Being agile" is based on systemic principles--the discipline of seeing wholes--which facilitates the rapid creation of business value. "Being agile" is dependent on the appropriate amount of up-front architecture. "Being agile" acknowledges and encourages the dynamics and emergent properties of the project, the project team, and the environment. In other words, "agile" that is standardized is not agile. Adding Systems Thinking to agile projects is always beneficial. In more detail, what's the "Systemic-ness" of the Agile?
The Agile Manifesto does not necessarily equate to "being agile." The Agile Manifesto was not written as a systemic prose, and thus is not sufficient criteria to determine if Agile is systemic. An Agile manifesto is not a description that includes all details. It is just a minimum set of principles that the proponents of a movement could agree upon. The rest is left for interpretation for each of the proponent. Though such set of principles leaves loopholes for improper usage, it might be the only way of having some agreement and move forward. The idea with the Agile manifesto is that it itself should be used, not dogmatically, but in an agile manner. Systems Thinking should be maintained throughout the project lifecycle to support agility through a balance between adequate architecture definition up front and flexibility to enable the solution to evolve as needs change or are better understood. When you combine a structured approach, rooted in architecture and methodology with an agile mindset and agile way of working (without being dogmatic about it), the complex problems can be solved more easily through this approach.
The systemic-ness of the agile approach shouldn't be about software development in isolation. The impact that the developed software or new adjusted functionality will have on the organization and environment it will be used in should be considered too. Here are three examples:(1) User adoption: A system that works as designed, but is very user-unfriendly, won't be used to the extent it could be used. Worst case scenario is that the end-users work around the system or misuse features of the system in order to do their job effectively. A systemic approach would include the user adoption of the system being developed.(2) Cost analysis: Development costs are often only a small part of the costs of the total application lifecycle. Often maintenance costs are five to ten times the original development costs. Savings in development costs often lead to higher development costs. Because departments / teams and budgets / financial reports of the development of the software differ from the maintenance of the software, this is often overlooked. A systemic approach would include an analysis of the costs of the total application lifecycle, and design decisions would be based on that full analysis.(3). Impact on process: Even when the software has been built as designed and the end users are satisfied with it, the situation could be that the software doesn't have an added value in the business process it is used for or regarding the goal of the organization as a whole. A systemic approach would include the impact of the developed software on the business processes and at the added value regarding reaching the goal of the organization.
Properly identify what amount of "architecting" is important up front. By jumping too soon into "iteration mode," many teams lose track of Systems Thinking and increase the risk that individual features will be initially approved by users only to be rejected later on when other related features are implemented. The agile methodology puts focus on implementation (programming, test, operation) and tacit knowledge transformation easing requirements on the design documents, in the ideal case not requiring them at all. The question arises on how this type of development can produce maintainable software, were the knowledge acquired during agile cycles is stored, and how it can be reused in the next cycle, or in the next projects. Lack of Systems Thinking is behind this issue: as new users stories are produced, they may expose the inadequacy of a previously approved solution precisely because the design did not take into consideration how one story influence another within the whole. At this point, all the talk about agile being less costly because it enables issues to be discovered and fixed sooner goes out the window.
Adding Systems Thinking to agile projects is always beneficial. Systems Thinking should be maintained throughout the project life-cycle to support agility, with a balance between adequate architecture definition up front and flexibility to enable the solution to evolve as needs change or are better understood. Systems Thinking is the best answer against late architecture-breaker rework and the steep slope of the cost-to-fix curve in many complex projects using agile approaches. Agile can be summarized as "real agility" (defined as the intent behind agile practices = rapid creation of business value) is always desirable. Specific agile development approaches (Scrum, test driven development, other frameworks that rely on very short development cycles) all have their "sweet spot," working very well for some types of projects, not well at all for other types. There isn't a "one size fits all" model for software development. Systemic-ness of agile means to leverage Systems Thinking not only in the context of individual project, but also to be considered at the enterprise level, where the same principle of systems thinking being important at all times applies as well.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Agile Manifesto does not necessarily equate to "being agile." The Agile Manifesto was not written as a systemic prose, and thus is not sufficient criteria to determine if Agile is systemic. An Agile manifesto is not a description that includes all details. It is just a minimum set of principles that the proponents of a movement could agree upon. The rest is left for interpretation for each of the proponent. Though such set of principles leaves loopholes for improper usage, it might be the only way of having some agreement and move forward. The idea with the Agile manifesto is that it itself should be used, not dogmatically, but in an agile manner. Systems Thinking should be maintained throughout the project lifecycle to support agility through a balance between adequate architecture definition up front and flexibility to enable the solution to evolve as needs change or are better understood. When you combine a structured approach, rooted in architecture and methodology with an agile mindset and agile way of working (without being dogmatic about it), the complex problems can be solved more easily through this approach.
The systemic-ness of the agile approach shouldn't be about software development in isolation. The impact that the developed software or new adjusted functionality will have on the organization and environment it will be used in should be considered too. Here are three examples:(1) User adoption: A system that works as designed, but is very user-unfriendly, won't be used to the extent it could be used. Worst case scenario is that the end-users work around the system or misuse features of the system in order to do their job effectively. A systemic approach would include the user adoption of the system being developed.(2) Cost analysis: Development costs are often only a small part of the costs of the total application lifecycle. Often maintenance costs are five to ten times the original development costs. Savings in development costs often lead to higher development costs. Because departments / teams and budgets / financial reports of the development of the software differ from the maintenance of the software, this is often overlooked. A systemic approach would include an analysis of the costs of the total application lifecycle, and design decisions would be based on that full analysis.(3). Impact on process: Even when the software has been built as designed and the end users are satisfied with it, the situation could be that the software doesn't have an added value in the business process it is used for or regarding the goal of the organization as a whole. A systemic approach would include the impact of the developed software on the business processes and at the added value regarding reaching the goal of the organization.

Adding Systems Thinking to agile projects is always beneficial. Systems Thinking should be maintained throughout the project life-cycle to support agility, with a balance between adequate architecture definition up front and flexibility to enable the solution to evolve as needs change or are better understood. Systems Thinking is the best answer against late architecture-breaker rework and the steep slope of the cost-to-fix curve in many complex projects using agile approaches. Agile can be summarized as "real agility" (defined as the intent behind agile practices = rapid creation of business value) is always desirable. Specific agile development approaches (Scrum, test driven development, other frameworks that rely on very short development cycles) all have their "sweet spot," working very well for some types of projects, not well at all for other types. There isn't a "one size fits all" model for software development. Systemic-ness of agile means to leverage Systems Thinking not only in the context of individual project, but also to be considered at the enterprise level, where the same principle of systems thinking being important at all times applies as well.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Published on June 03, 2015 23:51
What’re the Key Factors to Innovate at both Individual and Organizational Level
People who can solve the problems in the new way are innovators.
Effective and sustained innovation within an organization is rare. Having innovation as a core function, fully supported and funded by executive management with high levels of stakeholder participation is rare. But that is a choice. Every organization has the capacity to innovate both as one off initiatives or in a sustained way; both at individual level and organizational level. But more specifically, what’re the key factors in catalyzing business innovation?
At organizational level, leadership is crucial to build a culture of innovation: At organizational level, transformational innovation won’t take place if their core tendencies in their business life cycle aren’t identified and overcome. Unlearning what a company has learned is part and parcel to fixing what is broken. Companies of all sizes, especially large corporations, are designed to suck at innovation. Because they become too dependent on satisfying corporate regulation or protocols, and never get around to developing a culture that fosters/rewards innovation until it is too late. It takes true leadership; with less protocol, to listen to the other people in the company, in order to build a culture of innovation. And you won't unlearn dogma by having leaders who created the dogma be the leaders of rules and structures for innovating. But more often, leaders want to NOT change, and to control, under most circumstances, as change takes their agendas away. There is also NO such thing as transformational innovation unless the owners and stockholders buy in. Innovation is not a lifestyle of a company, but events that trigger the innovation or the necessity. Innovation and standardization are not opposite, but have to go hand-in-hand, to make innovation sustainable and business more mature.
At individual level, courage, passion and out of box thinking are key factors for innovating: Anyone is capable of innovating if they are capable of silencing the noise in the mind; and thinking outside the conditioned mind and without fear. Innovation is all about madness of solving problems and doing things in easy way. Innovation comes with the increased knowledge and understanding about facts. You never know, how innovative you might be in some field before encountering the problems and before adoption of solutions. Individuals will be more innovative if they are so passionate about their jobs that they live it on their own time (work related hobbies, testing theories, products and applications). If that kind of employee is working for you; not only do you have assurance you are getting value for the compensation you are spending, but get better resultsThe innovators are simply those who can see what's around, and easily and effortlessly discover a better way to do things; People are capable of innovating if they are capable of silencing the noise in the mind and thinking outside the conditioned mind and without fear. Nonlinear thinking and whole brain thinking provide more opportunity for innovation than linear thinking. People who can solve problems in the new way are the innovators. What many see as innovation is actually problem solving: a simple process of deduction to derive a solution drawing from knowledge, experience or a pool of data.
Practice, practice and practice more with relevance to innovation; doing more results in more opportunity for innovation. Creative people are inspired to think and work nearly everyday on creating, they are not waiting for such “Aha” moment, but proactively stimulate the new energy of fresh thinking; at organizational level, it’s all about building the creative workplace to strike the right balance between encouraging rule-less thinking and building rigorous processes to enforce risk management, and moving organizational maturity from efficiency, effectiveness to agility.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

At organizational level, leadership is crucial to build a culture of innovation: At organizational level, transformational innovation won’t take place if their core tendencies in their business life cycle aren’t identified and overcome. Unlearning what a company has learned is part and parcel to fixing what is broken. Companies of all sizes, especially large corporations, are designed to suck at innovation. Because they become too dependent on satisfying corporate regulation or protocols, and never get around to developing a culture that fosters/rewards innovation until it is too late. It takes true leadership; with less protocol, to listen to the other people in the company, in order to build a culture of innovation. And you won't unlearn dogma by having leaders who created the dogma be the leaders of rules and structures for innovating. But more often, leaders want to NOT change, and to control, under most circumstances, as change takes their agendas away. There is also NO such thing as transformational innovation unless the owners and stockholders buy in. Innovation is not a lifestyle of a company, but events that trigger the innovation or the necessity. Innovation and standardization are not opposite, but have to go hand-in-hand, to make innovation sustainable and business more mature.

Practice, practice and practice more with relevance to innovation; doing more results in more opportunity for innovation. Creative people are inspired to think and work nearly everyday on creating, they are not waiting for such “Aha” moment, but proactively stimulate the new energy of fresh thinking; at organizational level, it’s all about building the creative workplace to strike the right balance between encouraging rule-less thinking and building rigorous processes to enforce risk management, and moving organizational maturity from efficiency, effectiveness to agility.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Published on June 03, 2015 23:47
Talent Management Next Practice #2: "Hiring for Digital Minds"
The mind is the innovation engine of any human progress, but also the root cause of almost all human problems.
“Hiring for Minds” is the extended and detailed next practice of “Hiring for Character,” "Hiring for Attitude" and “Hiring for Potential” philosophy and methodology. Many hiring managers aren't comfortable with evaluating “mind-set,” or just lack the skills to evaluate it properly, and instead they rely on the answers the candidate gives to the more concrete skills inquiries. However, the mind is the innovation engine of any human progress, but also the root cause of almost all human problems. So more specifically, how can managers leverage talent assessment methodology and tools, talent development plans and practices to evaluate and build the right sets of digital minds, capabilities and skills in order to compete for the future?
The effective talent management next practices should be more structured and focus on digging deeper into mindset level: what questions to ask, what questions not to ask, and how to using questions that elicit insightful answers and reveal the truth about the candidate’s mindset and attitude; how to define different types of digital minds, how to create a structured approaches for assessing and evaluating not only the behaviors, but digging through to mindset level: how do people think, why do they think that way, and how do they approach problems and solve problems, so you can easily and consistently differentiate future high performers from mediocre mindset in your organization. And, of course, you can also use your discoveries to find and recruit high potentials with hard-wire attitude and multi-dimensional intelligent minds into your culture to keep high performers engaged.
The 9-box grid is an individual assessment tool that evaluates both an employee’s current contribution to the organization and his or her potential level of contribution to the organization. The 9-box grid is a simple table graph that rates “potential” on the Y, or vertical axis, and “performance” on the X, or horizontal axis. In other words, the vertical columns of the grid identify an individual employee’s growth potential within the organization, and the horizontal rows identify whether the employee is below, meeting or exceeding performance expectations in his or her current role. (SHRM.COM) First, consider that the power of the 9-box is not in the tool, but in the discussion. The best "fresh" approach is to change how you engage participants - are they grounded in a common view of talent? Are they entering the process honestly or selfishly? Do you actually follow through on talent decisions derived from the exercise? Some practitioners think that 9-box is highly subjective and only gives you a piece of the puzzle. Knowing how your people perform on the key areas that drive the business will help you make the right talent decisions. Too often the failure is in the execution, not the tool.
The paradox of Culture Fit: It is more about culture intelligence and adaptation: You need “misfit” mind to innovate culture; and you need culture fit to harmonize workplace. Because sometimes a “too fit” homogeneous team might cause change inertia (people get stuck in comfort zone), have cognitive gap, create blind spot, and lead to the “group thinking” trap. Hence, the digital mindset assessment is necessary to understand different thinking patterns and styles of employees or candidate, are they mostly systems thinker or intuitive thinker; more analytical or synthetic; more out of box thinker (critical & creative) to break the old rules, or more compliant to follow the orders; think more linear or nonlinear, holistic or mechanical way, etc. Technical competence, development potential, and culture adaptation are powerful together and add an element that is especially important in today's business environment.
Talent gap analysis and succession planning: Potential is quite a broad concept, one needs to anchor it a little to enable objective measurement by linking it to the important behaviors required for either the role of job level. When used for succession planning, one may want to focus more on the required competencies at the next level, rather than the current level the individual is at, in order to be proactive about gap analysis and succession planning. Competencies are a broad concept usually made up of a cluster of mindset (thought processes), capability, skills, knowledge, personality, and 'other' variables such as interest and values, It is important to leverage effective and updated tools used by high quality assessors to measure these factors more objectively. Talent assessments can provide a good measure of the potential of your talent (talent audit - individual or aggregate data to provide a good picture of strengths and development gaps) or provide information on how your talent compares by geography/job level/industry or business function (talent analytics). Another good application of objective measures is to provide you with objective data on culture intelligence and adaptation. People have innate strength or raw intelligence, and yet they can be developed, especially if one is aware of the natural potential waiting to be tapped. So the systematic talent management approach is to integrate not only more talent management information, but also use analytics to digital through mind level, and determine the people drivers of business outcomes.
With "VUCA" characteristics of digitalization, Talent Management will see the urgency of being innovative- because the frequent digital disruption is inevitable and ideally, "Hiring for Digital Minds" should be common practice for talent managers to take innovative initiatives, set the course for people management, culture management and business growth in digital way.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The effective talent management next practices should be more structured and focus on digging deeper into mindset level: what questions to ask, what questions not to ask, and how to using questions that elicit insightful answers and reveal the truth about the candidate’s mindset and attitude; how to define different types of digital minds, how to create a structured approaches for assessing and evaluating not only the behaviors, but digging through to mindset level: how do people think, why do they think that way, and how do they approach problems and solve problems, so you can easily and consistently differentiate future high performers from mediocre mindset in your organization. And, of course, you can also use your discoveries to find and recruit high potentials with hard-wire attitude and multi-dimensional intelligent minds into your culture to keep high performers engaged.
The 9-box grid is an individual assessment tool that evaluates both an employee’s current contribution to the organization and his or her potential level of contribution to the organization. The 9-box grid is a simple table graph that rates “potential” on the Y, or vertical axis, and “performance” on the X, or horizontal axis. In other words, the vertical columns of the grid identify an individual employee’s growth potential within the organization, and the horizontal rows identify whether the employee is below, meeting or exceeding performance expectations in his or her current role. (SHRM.COM) First, consider that the power of the 9-box is not in the tool, but in the discussion. The best "fresh" approach is to change how you engage participants - are they grounded in a common view of talent? Are they entering the process honestly or selfishly? Do you actually follow through on talent decisions derived from the exercise? Some practitioners think that 9-box is highly subjective and only gives you a piece of the puzzle. Knowing how your people perform on the key areas that drive the business will help you make the right talent decisions. Too often the failure is in the execution, not the tool.
The paradox of Culture Fit: It is more about culture intelligence and adaptation: You need “misfit” mind to innovate culture; and you need culture fit to harmonize workplace. Because sometimes a “too fit” homogeneous team might cause change inertia (people get stuck in comfort zone), have cognitive gap, create blind spot, and lead to the “group thinking” trap. Hence, the digital mindset assessment is necessary to understand different thinking patterns and styles of employees or candidate, are they mostly systems thinker or intuitive thinker; more analytical or synthetic; more out of box thinker (critical & creative) to break the old rules, or more compliant to follow the orders; think more linear or nonlinear, holistic or mechanical way, etc. Technical competence, development potential, and culture adaptation are powerful together and add an element that is especially important in today's business environment.

With "VUCA" characteristics of digitalization, Talent Management will see the urgency of being innovative- because the frequent digital disruption is inevitable and ideally, "Hiring for Digital Minds" should be common practice for talent managers to take innovative initiatives, set the course for people management, culture management and business growth in digital way.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Published on June 03, 2015 23:45
June 2, 2015
Is there anything as too much out-of-the-box thinking?
Creativity has often been analogized as “thinking outside the box.”
Fundamentally, the "box" is the set of "rules" you are abiding by at any moment in time, by breakdown of old rules, your mind sets free to create the new ideas, usually comes from identifying and challenging assumptions and then generating more possibilities. However, without box (rules), can you generate more useful and achievable ideas? Is there anything as too much out of the box thinking? Out of the box thinking keeps creativity flowing! Great ideas only happen outside of the usual restraints. Start with "what if . . ., " and see where it takes you. Only then do you have enough to start weeding out the bizarre and tweaking sound ideas into reality. The point is not to be unduly constrained in your thinking, but at the same time not to lose sight of the objective of thinking. Particularly, the box keeps changing. In today's competitive environment, what was outside the box yesterday, may not be such today. Our thinking has to continuously evolve, adopt, and prepare for changes...so there is not such things as too much outside the box thinking, but it's also important to shape the newer box to stay focus. There’s nothing wrong with lots of out-of-the box creative type thinking as long as you couple it with some good analytical (left brain type thinking). Otherwise, you’ll run the risk of spending too much time and effort chasing down bad ideas. Think of it as going from divergent thinking (out-of-the-box) to convergent thinking where you filter or funnel down the ideas to those that make sense given your capabilities.
There needs to be context, and known parameters; so it can be judged if it is cliche, inside the box thinking, outside the box thinking, or incomprehensible. It doesn't matter if the idea is original or mundane, if there is nothing to compare or relate it to. Most of the time, almost all the time, the unsolved thorny issue isn't that people are staring at the problem too long, it is that the problem isn't really clear in the first place. Everyone has a different interpretation of what the problem is, therefore staring at an unclear problem goes no where. Instead, don't jump too quickly into solution mode, and make sure everyone is really CLEAR on what the problem is, reframe the problems via applying "out of box" thinking, because as Einstein wisely put "you can's solve the problems with the same thinking when you created them."
Step into others' box to gain the new insight. Often a problem is seen very differently by two different parties. By stepping outside your own box and getting into theirs, a solution becomes obvious, then get back in your own box and think how that solution will work for you. Almost always, it's possible to see a mutually beneficial solution, or one solution with two parts to it. This method works particularly well with complex problems and the results can be surprising, two diametrically opposed parties sometimes end up working together on a solution that suits them both.
Out of the box thinking keeps creativity flowing! Too much thinking outside the box can get you to solitude, and too little can make you an ignorant. There needs to be context, balance and known parameters, so it can be judged if it is cliche, inside the box thinking, outside the box thinking, or incomprehensible. It doesn't matter if the idea is original or mundane, if there is nothing to compare or relate it to. More precisely, it’s about continuing to breakdown the outdated old box, and shape the new box thinking to see alternatives and solve complex problems with creativity and collaboration.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

There needs to be context, and known parameters; so it can be judged if it is cliche, inside the box thinking, outside the box thinking, or incomprehensible. It doesn't matter if the idea is original or mundane, if there is nothing to compare or relate it to. Most of the time, almost all the time, the unsolved thorny issue isn't that people are staring at the problem too long, it is that the problem isn't really clear in the first place. Everyone has a different interpretation of what the problem is, therefore staring at an unclear problem goes no where. Instead, don't jump too quickly into solution mode, and make sure everyone is really CLEAR on what the problem is, reframe the problems via applying "out of box" thinking, because as Einstein wisely put "you can's solve the problems with the same thinking when you created them."

Out of the box thinking keeps creativity flowing! Too much thinking outside the box can get you to solitude, and too little can make you an ignorant. There needs to be context, balance and known parameters, so it can be judged if it is cliche, inside the box thinking, outside the box thinking, or incomprehensible. It doesn't matter if the idea is original or mundane, if there is nothing to compare or relate it to. More precisely, it’s about continuing to breakdown the outdated old box, and shape the new box thinking to see alternatives and solve complex problems with creativity and collaboration.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Published on June 02, 2015 23:39
What’s your Choice: Valuable Vs Shippable Software
Valuable + Shippable is indeed what you should achieve.
Software development and delivery is challenge with lower success rate to fully meet customer expectation. And it is always facing the dilemma to leverage on time, on budget and on value. Many people ship on a certain date and then suffer the consequences when value was not present. These firms ship because of pressures by management or because some contract said that they had to. What was shipped in these cases was software that did not work well or as expected. So valuable vs. shippable software, what’s your choice? Do you generally consider Valuable + Shippable Software = Working Software?
It’s important to determine value early in the development process. It is common to ship software that you do not know the value. Seems like a flaw. Shippable Software not working is clearly having no value. The value of the software should be determined from the very beginning of the process by getting it into the hands of real users and responding to their feedback. The product owner and development team are not omniscient. Minimizing the time and effort before validating value allows one to determine whether to continue developing capabilities or stopping and going in a different direction. It’s important to determine value early in the development process in order to be able to either kill or "pivot" change the fundamental nature of a product as early as possible. So often working shipped software is the best way to get feedback - Sometimes the amount of up-front work you would need to do to get an idea in front of enough customers, stakeholders, and others to know how valuable it takes more work than coding it, shipping it, and testing it. So you need good inspection and metrics to notice and you need to adapt quickly with agility from knowledge to next shipment, so there is a strong customer perception that when an issue comes up, it will corrected!
Only customers can value your software. No like inventions in lab in the other domains, which could be "valuable" even before any production, software has to be used in order to be valuable. In other words, value could possibly be realized only after the software is shipped.Valuable - the feature has some value on its own to the customer. It is worth doing provided the value exceeds the cost by a sufficient amount. A feature that the customer would never use has no value. a feature that a customer might use, but that doesn't do anything useful probably has no value…Shippable - You can deliver the feature as - is, to the customer, and no harm will be done. Once software is shipped, value can be received in multiple ways. A feature is validated as useful to the customer. A feature is determined not to be useful to the customer, only customers can value your software. Just because it ships doesn't mean it will provide value. There are plenty of examples of products that shipped but were failures because they weren't validated and don't address a customer need or desire (which is the true measure of value).
If product is shipped, there are three possibilities concerning value. If nothing is shipped, one is relying on projections to determine whether the eventual deployment will actually provide value. -The best case is that the product is shipped and provides benefit to the target audience. In this case, the projection has been validated and the team should continue upon the projected path.-A second situation is that the product is shipped, but no detectable benefit is realized. In this case, the projection has been disproved and the team should identify a new path and discontinue the current path. This limits the amount of effort expended on non-productive effort.-The third case is that the product is shipped, but is found to actually be detrimental. In this case, the projection has be determined to be greatly off track, and the team should roll back the latest change and drastically identify a new direction. This limits effort and out and out damage due to a mistaken projection.
The real outcome to aim for should be to ship a valuable solution. The only time you should set a goal to be shippable is if value is already inherently in the solution. If the product increment is valuable at the end of iteration according to the Definition of Done then that increment is shippable. Valuable increment must be shippable and shippable increment must be valuable. Every team must have definition of valuable and shippable product increment based on their nature of work and business people expectations. Shipping the wrong product on time and within budget doesn't benefit anybody, particularly the company. You'll hardly make money by shipping a product that has no value to anybody, and that's the goal, after all: making profit. Agile provides you an advantage because you can ship with value and still make deadlines if the customer representative agrees with the scope and the backlog is documented and managed. You don't have to sweep the software problems under the rug and wait for the consumer or those maintaining the system to find them later when you are gone.
You can only manage what you measure. It is common to ship software that you do not know the value. Sometimes software you believe to be valuable will sometimes turn out to test poorly and need to be removed. In the final analysis it was shippable but not valuable. In the long-run and on average what you ship must be valuable but any given shipment may not be. A high performance company that is analytics driven knows this and freely accepts they will ship software that ends up being of no valuable. Spending money on metrics to learn the in-production value of things produces great returns. It has been that often when a feature is shipped to the field the metrics give you a different story than any upfront work you did with a limited release or a limited set of users. It has usually indicated that the misalignment in the value understanding pre-shipment compared to post-shipment (metrics evaluated) come down to one or more of the following: A) You have no idea why it did not test as well in product as it did pre-production. B) Your pre-production test sample was not large enough or not representative enough. C) The live user based discovered an aspect of the feature or product that was not apparent in the pre-production tests.
To succeed, you need to ship valuable software. The answer, then, is "both." Valuable + Shippable. There is neither a dichotomy or a line to be drawn. There is never a circumstance where one triumphs over the other. Valuable + Shippable is indeed what you should achieve. Product Owner in Scrum should take care of "building the right thing" while the development team is responsible for "building the right thing right." In some situations the development team would like to reduce the functionality to build shippable product increment within the iteration. The question is how to decide if it is still valuable? Making the stories smaller and ordered in terms of value may help in such cases - the team should just make them one by one leaving the least valuable unfinished. You should be focused on the customers business needs and values. Then look for ANYTHING the team can develop to get them there.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

It’s important to determine value early in the development process. It is common to ship software that you do not know the value. Seems like a flaw. Shippable Software not working is clearly having no value. The value of the software should be determined from the very beginning of the process by getting it into the hands of real users and responding to their feedback. The product owner and development team are not omniscient. Minimizing the time and effort before validating value allows one to determine whether to continue developing capabilities or stopping and going in a different direction. It’s important to determine value early in the development process in order to be able to either kill or "pivot" change the fundamental nature of a product as early as possible. So often working shipped software is the best way to get feedback - Sometimes the amount of up-front work you would need to do to get an idea in front of enough customers, stakeholders, and others to know how valuable it takes more work than coding it, shipping it, and testing it. So you need good inspection and metrics to notice and you need to adapt quickly with agility from knowledge to next shipment, so there is a strong customer perception that when an issue comes up, it will corrected!
Only customers can value your software. No like inventions in lab in the other domains, which could be "valuable" even before any production, software has to be used in order to be valuable. In other words, value could possibly be realized only after the software is shipped.Valuable - the feature has some value on its own to the customer. It is worth doing provided the value exceeds the cost by a sufficient amount. A feature that the customer would never use has no value. a feature that a customer might use, but that doesn't do anything useful probably has no value…Shippable - You can deliver the feature as - is, to the customer, and no harm will be done. Once software is shipped, value can be received in multiple ways. A feature is validated as useful to the customer. A feature is determined not to be useful to the customer, only customers can value your software. Just because it ships doesn't mean it will provide value. There are plenty of examples of products that shipped but were failures because they weren't validated and don't address a customer need or desire (which is the true measure of value).
If product is shipped, there are three possibilities concerning value. If nothing is shipped, one is relying on projections to determine whether the eventual deployment will actually provide value. -The best case is that the product is shipped and provides benefit to the target audience. In this case, the projection has been validated and the team should continue upon the projected path.-A second situation is that the product is shipped, but no detectable benefit is realized. In this case, the projection has been disproved and the team should identify a new path and discontinue the current path. This limits the amount of effort expended on non-productive effort.-The third case is that the product is shipped, but is found to actually be detrimental. In this case, the projection has be determined to be greatly off track, and the team should roll back the latest change and drastically identify a new direction. This limits effort and out and out damage due to a mistaken projection.
The real outcome to aim for should be to ship a valuable solution. The only time you should set a goal to be shippable is if value is already inherently in the solution. If the product increment is valuable at the end of iteration according to the Definition of Done then that increment is shippable. Valuable increment must be shippable and shippable increment must be valuable. Every team must have definition of valuable and shippable product increment based on their nature of work and business people expectations. Shipping the wrong product on time and within budget doesn't benefit anybody, particularly the company. You'll hardly make money by shipping a product that has no value to anybody, and that's the goal, after all: making profit. Agile provides you an advantage because you can ship with value and still make deadlines if the customer representative agrees with the scope and the backlog is documented and managed. You don't have to sweep the software problems under the rug and wait for the consumer or those maintaining the system to find them later when you are gone.

To succeed, you need to ship valuable software. The answer, then, is "both." Valuable + Shippable. There is neither a dichotomy or a line to be drawn. There is never a circumstance where one triumphs over the other. Valuable + Shippable is indeed what you should achieve. Product Owner in Scrum should take care of "building the right thing" while the development team is responsible for "building the right thing right." In some situations the development team would like to reduce the functionality to build shippable product increment within the iteration. The question is how to decide if it is still valuable? Making the stories smaller and ordered in terms of value may help in such cases - the team should just make them one by one leaving the least valuable unfinished. You should be focused on the customers business needs and values. Then look for ANYTHING the team can develop to get them there.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Published on June 02, 2015 23:37
A Value - Driven IT

First start by ensuring IT is in fact marketable. Is the IT organization seen as part of the solution or a part of the problem? You must "toot your own horn," but make sure it does not backfire. Do your groundwork. Understand the strengths and weaknesses as perceived by your peers as well as the users. Review how the rest of the C suite is marketing their successes and fall in line where appropriate. Instead of focusing solely on the value of IT, make sure you show the value of IT in collaboration with others in delivering on a specific set of company goals. Make sure you have an outstanding team, and then let folks know about it in a way that resonates with the intended audience. Finally, make sure you know why you are marketing IT. What are you expecting? What is the goal of this effort? Measure and adapt.
IT needs to have a clear vision and road-map to which CIOs expect the IT department to deliver. To build and demonstrate IT Success, IT leaders need to focus on the business IT roadmap; that is how IT supports business objectives and processes leveraged by IT and an effective IT strategy as integral component of business strategy. Where IT shall focus on the business bottom line: How fast can IT gets products and services to market - “Time to Market,” and how can the IT department support the business from a Cycle Time and Cost Effectiveness perspective. IT roadmap reflects stakeholder expectations from executive management, business management, IT Management and IT GRC Management perspective where stakeholder expectations drives business (IT) objectives that delivers the business - IT roadmap executed by employees and organization. IT delivers to demand and cost drivers. IT supports the achievement of tactical business objectives, IT delivers perceived added value services at a reasonable cost, IT delivers to operational and service level agreements and commitments, IT investments positively affect business productivity and the customer experience.
IT contributes to business objectives because IT proposition has to be well aligned to the business strategy: Stakeholder expectations are understood and IT propose a service portfolio that correspond to demand and cost drivers, business contribution, cost, consumption and chargeback is identified, focus is on perfect order business transactions, services are effective with demand and cost drivers identified, services are competitive via benchmark measurement, and new technological solutions that could change how current business is performed are explored, proposed and implemented. On the IT side, you also need to understand (1) which service that are concerned (increase / decrease in demand) and if IT need to modify / provide new service bundles, (2) does IT provide a cost effective and secure IT architecture and that permit the rapid development of new business services (3) From ROI perspective, can you spell out the cost? (4) can you ensure that services / applications are up and running (business continuity) at the same time, IT is a major business differentiator and need to be on top of business initiatives to be successful. IT generally tends to run at the speed equal or higher than sales which put immense pressure to prove yourselves and hence marketing is a manner of handling perception management.

IT provides competitive leverage to business’ long term growth: Because more often, technology is the cause to innovation disruption and information is the lifeblood of business; and IT organizations deliver effective IT services and innovative technology solutions to improve competitiveness, demonstrated and articulated in an IT business model: “This is how we deliver IT solutions to the business.” IT provides competitive leverage. If CIOs had the seat at big table, IT supports the achievement of strategic business objectives with the priorities from an executive management perspective. IT delivers value to expenditure, IT cost is managed effectively, IT risk is identified and managed, Targeted inter company IT synergies deliver to schedule, Business Continuity is ensured. There are key priorities from an IT Risk management perspective: The organization's assets and operations are protected, key business and technology risk is effectively managed, effective process, practice and controls are in place, IT has clear GRC objectives to which businesses expect IT to deliver.
IT needs to deliver effective services and solutions to business needs on value and on time. With the trend of IT consumerization and emergent Cloud computing, at the end of the day, business departments will take the decision to walk around IT and purchase cloud source on their own when IT is not perceived to understand stakeholder expectations, IT is not perceived to contribute to business objectives, IT is not perceived to deliver value to cost, IT is not perceived to deliver tailored solution to business needs, The IT department is unable to deliver services in a time to market perspective, IT propose an effective service/solution portfolio that correspond to demand and cost drivers. IT value proposition is based on: “This is how we enable business growth and support business objectives with services/solutions in a time to market perspective.” Time to market perspective is where IT supports business processes to develop vision and strategy, to develop and manage products and services, to market and sell products and services, to deliver products and services, to manage customer services, to develop and manage Human Capital, to manage information technology, to manage financial resources, to acquire, construct and manage property, to manage environmental health and safety, to orchestrate external relationships, manage knowledge, improvement and change where business processes (bundled business services) are supported by applications.
A value driven IT needs to understand stakeholders’ expectations and propose a service/solution portfolio that correspond to both demand and cost drivers with a focus on business priority, IT develops the professional competencies needed for successful business solution delivery, IT captures organizational knowledge to continuously improve performance, The IT and Stakeholder departments have clear objectives, processes and indicators with clear accountability and responsibility to deliver business objectives and implement business strategy steadily.
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Published on June 02, 2015 23:34
June 1, 2015
How to Study Strategy and Shape a Strategist’s Mindset

The strategy, either deliberate strategy or emergent strategy becomes more critical due to the constant changes: We all know that the "good old days" of prospects knocking on "your" door are gone. More than ever, companies need to be innovative and think of new ways to bring in new business, while they do their best at developing supplemental revenues from their existing customers. While we are wrestling with our own fears about survival, we can't forget that many of our customers are wrestling with theirs. When we face our own fears and mobilize to grow, we can often choose who we target and how we sell to them. We can market to those who are hanging on to "doing what they always did" with messages suggest that if you buy our product/services -- you'll stay safe and survive. Or we can market to those who already understand that this is a time of opportunity -- if we can convince them that we are offering a product/service that will indeed help them grow. The real issue is that a strategy is, in many people's eyes, nothing more than an intention that needs to be tested in the marketplace or business environment. Some go as far as calling it a hypothesis that needs to be tested. If a strategy is being tested continuously, then the results must be evaluated and that's where, strategy becomes a discourse. People within the organization rarely have congruent views and a discourse emerges about the strategy. Some use the power of analysis, others use the power of ideas, some use the power of position and others may use influence to shape the discussion. In the end, as managers and leaders, you arrive at a consensus that becomes the orthodoxy of strategy and may require a revolution in paradigm to change.
Strategy as a discourse offers a different take on strategic decision-making. Strategy is about one logic, one idea, one philosophy, thoughts toward achieving one fundamental dichotomy. One aims.'why we are here' not why we are not. A re-thinking process of advancing a strategic game plan. The study of strategy as discourse is actually the study of organizational learning. A strategy is the organization's competitive "logic" manifested through organizational actions. This logic is acquired through a learning process involving discourse within the context of an organization's culture. The study of strategy as a discourse will significantly improve the understanding, execution and measurement of strategic outcomes. A strategic study often brings about the 'actual change of tactics we really need and further toward to the act of doing things in horizontal ways through a systematic and fast tracking growth in line with institutional goals en route for accomplishment. However, Only if such discuss are adequately converted by those minds under the training in appropriate amounts, and they're in turn are ready to live with such inward changes within themselves and for the institution's better-ness. These processes of study strategy and their outcomes are highly influenced by the social context in which they take place. It is precisely this social context that makes studying strategy as a discourse so attractive. If you study strategy as a discourse, you effectively study how different actors (managers) construct discourses on strategy and apply them in certain social contexts. Thus, you are studying people and how people react in social contexts rather than studying strategy - strategy is merely a vehicle used to study the people.

At any point in time a strategy can be articulated. Strategy as a discourse can be very fruitful as a means of understanding how people within organizations formulate, evaluate and disseminate their concept of the firm's or organization's strategy. However, we should be very cautious in the terminology because a strategy is not a discourse, but quite possibly the articulation of a firm's strategy is the result of discourse, not only within the organization but also externally.
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Published on June 01, 2015 23:31
Content or Design: Which Comes First

Content should always be an input for the design and not the other way around. Precisely and all too often people start with wireframes, which are a real bane of content. Defining the messages to convey, their order, and their wording is a capital step in the definition of a digital service. Constant interplays between content/information structure and user goals throughout the design process. Just because you have the business's content doesn't mean you have everything. They're not perfect - considering user flows (and needs/wants/expectations) as well as your own experience as a site creator will help expose holes.* what does the user want to know or do,* what logical content structure is needed to do this,* how can the information be packaged in UI to meet the users’ goals,* does usability testing confirm this,* do delivery considerations suggest modifications to the content structure,* do the detailed UX design.
Content is more than just "important," it's the lynch pin of the overall experience. When the user is done, it's the content that leaves the longest lasting impression, good or bad. Great content keeps people coming back, not shiny bells and whistles. Assuming the user research has been properly done and the decision is made to build a site to meet user needs, which hopefully align with business needs, start with the content before working on the visual and functional aspects of the design.Use a content strategy technique, which predates wireframes, Page Description Diagrams. A PDD is a plain text table establishing content prominence hierarchies and relationships without making layout decisions. The absence of layout and other visual treatments, which ought to support content instead of leading its creation, enables a focus on issues and language rather than filling-in empty layout boxes.

Content is the king. From research about what user wants/needs, then the logical content leads into some aspects of initial design, but design does not stop there. It continues as you collaborate with the wider team, in no particular order, Interaction design, Information Architecture design, Database design, Service design, HTML structure design, Visual design, etc. Only by collaborating together is the result greater than the sum of the individual parts - the sequence in which these design things happen will vary all the time. By collaborating in this way, new insights crop up all the time which need to feed back into design too. The fundamental deisgn principle is that the user should always come first.
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Published on June 01, 2015 23:28
Digital Talent Management Next Practice: Character and Mindset Assessment

The breakdown assessment of mindset or characters: One needs to understand that character oozes out of a person’s thought process, communication, behaviors and action and so on so forth. One needs to have an eye for all that. Character is fed by the heart and mind through the blood running in one’s veins and the heart and mind are guarded by the subconscious. Thus in order to allow a correct assessment, the guard has to be lowered and in order to understand correctly, you really need the acumen and power to probe in very deep level, have a strong tool into the hands of the assessor, which holds the capacity to allow you a much deeper ingress into the very soul of the person. Whether for selection, career development, promotion, or self-development, the assessments are really about ascertaining the individual's "current state," a snapshot of where they are at in that moment of time; also predict his or her “to be” state, their potential to be who they want to become. The break down assessment types include: (1) Innate thinking capabilities & styles, cognitive skills and decision-making biases; (2). behavioral styles and patterns; (3). motivational drivers and passions. Altogether and combined, they provide a well-rounded assessment baseline of "character" or more specifically the individual’s mindsets. Talent managers then know the nature fit of talent and work, how inclined are they to guide, inspire and develop other people, what types of roles and careers they connect with, and much more.
The talent mind assessment shall go beyond just traditional IQ and EQ, expand to CQ (Character Quotient), VQ (Value Judgement Quotient), SQ (Strategic Thinking Quotient,) or PQ (Paradoxical Thinking Quotient), etc. There have been major advancements in the field of neuro-axiology (neuroscience + value science) and the ability to directly and objectively measure the current value perceptions and attitudes that comprises a person's unique "character." It is a deductive assessment, not inductive like most others. It measures what being called VQ (Value-judgment intelligence Quotient) across 36 dimensions. VQ gets to the root source of everything that other assessments measure. Moreover, the assessment report is highly actionable. The application to this assessment instrument is based on recent findings in neuroscience that have created the major breakthroughs. Understanding character is very relevant and timely for those leaders who are seeking new ways to maximize themselves and human capital initiatives in their organizations. For enduring success, Talent managers shall respect, embrace and then go beyond traditional (IQ) and emotional intelligence (EQ) measures, to individual and collective attitudes, beliefs and commitment principles ... CHARACTER or CQ, the Character Quotient!

The talent performance and potential assessment is not just a stand alone assessment. It is the foundation of a full-blown, structured personal and leadership development process. It is also used to assess the "character" of entire organizations which is the corporate culture, and the science behind it has significant implication for the whole of the organization level progress. The assessment not only measures thinking, but teaches the person how to tap into their most powerful and brilliant modes of thinking anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances. Within every human being there are core ways of thinking that, when activated, genuinely and authentically unlock their maximum potential to create value in any situation. That’s what it gets to. It raises emotional intelligence to the level of multidimensional intelligence and wisdom. It's not about fixing weaknesses, it's about strengthening the strength, maximizing good thinking and eliminating the negative influence of "weaknesses" and habits so that maximize value in all forms can be created.
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Published on June 01, 2015 23:26