Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1442

Why does Silo Happen and How to Bridge It

Many say silo eats strategy for dinner. There are different definitions of silo, by its nature it’s about isolation. The segmenting or sectioning of work by skill/knowledge/type/etc. is a necessary component of complex work or large workplaces. But silos are fundamentally about keeping the mind static and keeping the people separate rather than keeping work separate.
Silos happen when the "Why?" in business is not properly communicated from the senior level management down through business units. The "why" must be answered throughout the business chain, otherwise, the employee does not have the correct purpose. Specifics must be addressed and consistent execution and accountability. Steven Covey professes, "Begin with the end in mind." Silos are a product of organizational insecurity and internal competition for resources. This is a cultural problem resulting from poor leadership. Open communication and sharing increases the ability to fulfill your mission, satisfy your customer or client base, and improve employee productivity.In business circumstances, say, you have groups of people who will execute whatever comes down the pipeline, and those that have problems with tasks will ask questions. How these questions are handled, more than anything else, will tell you the health of the organization, and the silos you can expect to find.
Silos are based on a culture of self-protection and judgment.  Many think silo happens when business operates from a fear standpoint - fear of rejection, fear of invisibility, fear that other peoples' accomplishments will somehow diminish your own, etc. It reduces a sense of belonging and connection to your organization's larger mission. It's very human, as we do this outside the workplace as well. We organize ourselves into groups and then pit them against each other. Silos might make you feel insulated and “powerful,” but they form a very insecure base for the ego which is why it never really feels good to work in an environment like that. Changing this culture requires an admission that you can do better all around, but this often causes many people to feel deeply anxious about doing so. And it's hard to give up the illusion of power it gives you. It takes a tremendous amount of self-reflection and active leadership to create a more positive culture.  
It comes to the specialists versus generalists debate. At industrial age, businesses value specialization so much that they don't set up systems to consistently facilitate specialists meeting cross-discipline with other specialists. From that flow many of the power issues, and many of the limitations of silos. For quite some time, due to the process driven, functional oriented “silo” nature of industrial organization, they have been fostering a belief that 'people should 'specialize' or become an expert on one thing to a level in which they can be the 'best of the best.' The society encourages such thinking at the young age, it’s also been encouraged in businesses. Therefore, they end up cobbling together a business organization of disparate, but hopefully aligned toward some vision and objective; add in that, businesses tend to promote off 'measurable output,' they manage down like a specialist and collaborate with other manager peers as a specialist meeting with other specialists. Organizations hope they actually have a generalist who rises up who can interface effectively with all the specialists; but most organizations elevate a specialist; and that is what they feel most comfortable with. Silos self perpetuate because that is the business culture we consciously encourage individuals to pursue ...  Because the world is increasingly complex and fast-changing the need for specialization is likely to increase.However, greater specialization does not need to lead to silo working - there are other organizational options because today’s business is also hyer-connected.
Great organizations are supposed to maximize the individual and the group. A silo is supposed to have a specific strategic goal, and that is actually okay. Someone above the silo is supposed to piece all the individual puzzle pieces together. Sometimes we need to go back to basics in these situations. Silos have  individual goals, strategic goals need to be shared and common. Realign and refresh the purpose and maintain correct direction of the teams-basic leadership, because sometimes change management principles so easily get lost in day to day operational responsibilities. A silo is supposed to focus on what they do and keep their eye on that ball. A good leader shares just enough 'outside the silo' to keep them involved and invested in the greater purpose or vision, but not too much that it slows them down on what they really focus on doing to maximize the silo tasks and objectives. Some management gurus call this managed autonomy. All the members are working towards common goals and objectives, with a passionate desire to see the organization succeed. Any misfits will not succeed long for lack of collaborating partners



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HR Innovation

HR is the steward of business’s most valuable asset-people, and thus, it plays strategic role in business transformation. HR is uniquely positioned to provide senior levels with a 'sanity check.' Is there a disconnect between HR real-time experience of what is needed, and leadership development at the top? How would you look at this situation from an internal communications and relational perspective? Is there a leverage point somewhere? What if you're in HR and really feel you're working with vintage models, or focusing on the wrong problems. Are you basically screwed? Or put simply, how do you manage HR innovation effectively?
Innovation even at functional level, needs to be seen in the context of business level strategy. The business strategy of the organization may not be predominantly innovation based. Most departments suffer from lack of innovation in some way or another; even the departments that are supposedly specialists in that very thing. HR is often charged with providing the tools and training to facilitate models coming alive. There is a lot of talk about the need for 'next generation' leadership for sustainable performance in business environments that have become very complex very fast. In terms of implications on a management practice level, real innovations in HR territory seem to be very difficult to achieve.The culture has to invite and encourage innovation. Innovation in HR requires two basic things...not mutually exclusive of one another yet not required for both to be present, either.
Guts: HR needs to partner with organizational leadership and solve the issues and set the course for people management. Quite often, when sitting to discuss conditions with C-levels, they are unclear as to their business' direction! HR should not assume business and organizational leaders have the critical information that they need to develop an HR strategy. Another example of where "guts" comes into play. Based on the information available, you must be willing at times to take action when complete information is unavailable. In such instances, the knowledge, skill and savvy along with the confidence has in us greatly impacts the results of our actions. In terms of innovation, complex business challenges require an experimental approach, not an experiential approach. That takes guts. Innovation is about emerging practice. It's become much easier to justify taking actions where elite organizations have already performed implementation and achieved some degree of success. Many times, the organization seeks the safety net far too quickly in the planning rather than allowing the innovative spirit a freer reign. The needs to be able to justify seems to have taken precedent over the challenge associated with pioneering innovation.
Trust: In most companies, leadership is driven from the top levels of a company. It is this level who set the stage. It is much easier to consider implementing new thoughts when the C-level executive team in your organization trusts your judgments and your ability to produce. When HR earns support from organizational leadership that proposed initiatives will achieve predictable outcomes - You will gain acknowledgement and trust that you can solve the challenges which surface within the organizations. The problem is it requires a radically different approach and an abandonment of the drive for best practices and benchmarks. If HR is to make a breakthrough it should configure itself to drive differentiated value for the unique organizational challenges, opportunities, culture, products, markets etc. Trust is not a one-way street, HR should be the first to start building the relationship in a way that management can understand.

Yet too often the similarities between HR functions outweigh the differences. Change is inevitable, A HR function supporting an organization that needs innovation for competitive advantage must look different and deliver different value from one that must enable operational excellence, culture of innovation, capability building and talent empowerment.





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What's the biggest Weakness with Agile?

Agile as a collection of benevolent ideas, concepts that are meant to inspire so it really doesn't have any weaknesses as such. Any perceived weakness is largely due to the implementer wrapping their processes around the Agile Manifesto and Principles, or some culture conflict that is often weighted toward the company's existing culture. A few perceived weakness with Agile includes:
Agile doesn't try and be anything prescriptive. The biggest 'weakness' of Agile, if you call it that, is that it is a framework and is not prescriptive. This implies that you need experience in order to adapt to it.  Agile is a framework not a prescriptive methodology. This is both its strength and its weakness. You are fit to do as you wish within this framework, and it's very easy to grab hold of enough rope to hang yourself. Which some see as a weakness. It's too easy for people to say they are being agile when they are not. It tends to ignore the business and only cover the software development department. It's too easy to fall into zealotry rather than understanding. Agile is a collection of quite diverse ideas and concepts, so it's difficult to show specific weaknesses. The weaknesses occur through people's misconception and misperception of what they can do or not do when they begin to adopt some of these Agile principles. "It's always a people problem."
One potential weakness is that agile assumes competence and knowledge: a team of novices running agile is liable to run into problems (although frameworks like Scrum can help to bridge the gap). Another potential weakness is the risk of disconnects between teams naïvely delivering stories without considering business value. Agile's double edged sword is that it requires a self forming team of motivated individuals. When you have that motivated team, it's awesome, when you don't you can quickly crash and burn before you have time to turn the team around. The problems happen when people string together random elements of agile without proper thought as to how they should connect and interact, it's always an interface problem. The biggest weakness is that agile is a process for grown ups. It requires a deep understanding, and a huge amount of self discipline, and a mindset that includes constant learning and striving for excellence and a certain enthusiasm for social interaction.
To be successful, the *entire* organization *must* be agile. Many organizations are incapable of doing that. Popularly, Agile seems to be "do whatever feels right." That may hold for the smallish per iteration analysis and construction activities. But, for the big picture, up front analysis of full cycle Agile, scale agile best practice to the organizational level are all important. Complex problems require simple, straight forward approaches. It causes big problem when breaking Agile principle by trying to adopt agile in a part of the organization without taking care for the other parts of the non-agile organization (sub-optimization). Organizations has to not only doing Agile, but also being Agile.
Will Agile’s greatest weakness become its source of strength, getting buy-in for the Agile Principles and getting buy-in for how the company's culture can support these principles will be a huge first step. Apply it as values and principles based framework, not just a specific project management methodology, the strength of Agile is its agility with three “I”s: Interaction, Iteration and Improvement.  
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A Refreshed Mind

Space and silence coexist in nature-and we are all a part of nature.
We live in a culture and global dynamic that is constantly changing all around us. And, we are always looking to change or fix people and problems, or more fundamentally rebooting the mindset. So, what on earth could create space and silence have to do with refreshing your mind and calming your heart?

Creating space and silence, even for a moment, allows one to observe rather than act. Not only is our culture constantly changing, we are bombarded with and have learned to constantly seek information on the minutiae of every facet of each change. The critical information which we so often miss, though, is in the gaps. When we pause to take a breath, we have an opportunity to consolidate, assimilate and understand, but we usually view it simply as down ( non-productive) time. Without either creating or being consciously aware of the space and silence of the gaps, you are only able to achieve and facilitate incremental change.

The gap is where eureka exists. With the space to breathe in moving through a big change, one is transforming the whole of you somehow, so is in danger of taking your breathe away, clearly you need a space to breathe again in the pathway for real change  it’s critical for people to have time to breathe a new air that enables new sight and helps people see a different and new way of doing something. Space and silence are key to listening from the heart and refreshing the mind. It’s the place where transformation occurs. Experiences with mindful walking, creating silence-listening from the heart and feeling recharged and inspire in quiet spaces and peace of mind silent moments.

There is nature's calming quiet: The sound of the wind and birds sounding their own symphony, seeing the different gradients of green on the land and in the water and the different gradients of blue in the sky and the ocean. In this natural space, all that is present including self is different from each other. Yet, we all coexist in one space. The quiet space is in alignment with nature and nature is in alignment with the quiet space; we are at harmony with one another despite all of our differences. This naturally occurs, though no person can control over what colors are in nature or the wonderful sights and sounds. Despite having no control over what naturally occurs, peace of mind and heart exist in the space.

Space and silence coexist in nature-and we are all a part of nature. Space and silence although at first glance might be dismissed as "nothing," they are all around us-even if we can't see them. When under challenge, you need the peace and tranquility to seek assurances on decisions, and intentions; knowing confidently there has only one plan for us; a good plan. When you are at peace with your life, decisions, or plans then you always find peace, and space to consider the next steps. In either circumstance, you can build internal abilities to find peace, space, and rest knowing change is around us constantly.

The 'space' is not always associated with silence, stillness and quiet. Some find the 'space' they need by maintaining diverse engagement of mind and body directly with the 'noise' of the world. Oddly, they find silence of silence deafening. Their approach to finding space is similar to the noise cancelling effect found on modern microphones. Creating one noise cancels out another leaving space needed. Creating space for ourselves to regroup and recharge ourselves is vitally important to our well-being; and that space can be a physical location or it can be an internal space we create through meditation, imagining, visualization, relaxation. Space in the right place enables a " big picture" exposure. But finding space for personal time only will come from dedication to understanding that the human needs time alone with self wherever he or she can find it.

There is no one-size fits all of creating space and silence in our lives; and more importantly to ask ourselves; what value do we place on creating quiet space and silence? Then put our answer to the question of : Is valuing and creating space and quiet silence in my daily routine in alignment with my health and peace of mind? With the health and peace of mind, the creativity can be switched on; the mind gets focused, and the gaps of cognition leading to meta cognition. Space and silence is priceless.

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How to Develop Digital Leaders with Global Mind

Leadership effectiveness in global context comes into play with reciprocating awareness.

The world becomes over-complex and hyper-connected, there are many multinational managers, but very few global leaders, developing global leadership capability within a VUCA world is an important and relevant strategy. And successful business leaders must have strong coping skills to facilitate vision, sound judgement, thought process, social and communication skills with global context. What is global leadership with cross cultural effectiveness? How to develop leaders with global mindset? Is it leveraged by being different or by fitting in via “misfit” thinking or fresh views from different angles? Shall you just keep the status quo? Or, not fear to rock the boat to “see things differently”?


Leadership effectiveness in global context comes into play with reciprocating awareness: Custom or language is just at very surface of understanding a great culture. Being multilingual definitely helps, but key elements that future leaders in all realms of the human experience should acquire to effectively familiarize themselves with the psychological, physiological, geographical, geopolitical, anthropological, historical, philosophical and sociological effects of globalization. In other words, it is essential to become aware of our own value systems and understand the diverse values of others. In today's global workplace, recognizing where you are similar and where it might be wise to equip the new thinking processes and adapt suitable behaviors is a key skill to interacting with those one might perceive as different. Once the barriers are lifted, great things can happen. Therefore, new generation of "flat world communicators" or “round global ambassadors” are in strong demand to combine with renewed attitudes mixed with cross cultural cognizance. Fundamental core values still resonate as supreme. Respect for one another by following the golden rules.

Leaders with cultural intelligence can be more effective than those without. Leadership is complex and leading across cultures is more complex. At a global level, an effective leaders need to have a thorough understanding of the various culture and how these leadership characteristics show up in this cultures. Culture shapes how we think about what is good leadership, and the definitions of an "effective leader" vary from one culture to another. The diversity of thoughts, character, cognitive difference, skills, style and generation account for the majority of our differences. A global leader needs to be able to facilitate and orchestrate these difference, values and cultures. Personally, irrespective of where you are from or your culture, as a global leader, you need to be developing the characteristics of an effective leader, an inspiring mentor, and a passionate coach or teacher. As a leader you don't have the answers, you need to ask questions and provide insights to you team member to come up with the solutions, strategies, objectives....However, most of leaders or managers still operate in their old narrow ways. The paradox lies in the reality that businesses thrive on creativity and risk taking- something the nonconformist can easily dispense- and the need for everyone to be on the proverbial page.

Allow the difference to exist and leverage on the difference. It's like a full set of tools, so you can choose to use the right or most suitable one for that particular work. We are all unique in many ways and no two person are exactly the same across the globe. We must harness the values that each can bring to the table. Understanding the values of your audience will facilitate your ability to develop empathy, cohesion and strategic alliance within the group and across the groups; working with what collective values and unwritten rules exist in different groups, and how that is in line with the individuals values and unwritten rules, the organizational values and unwritten rules. Generally speaking, all human beings are more similar than different, it is possible to set the common principles to bridge the difference and lead more effectively. Understanding the dynamics of the relationship between knowledge and its effective application in real time decision environments is an important strand of leadership, that has emerged from the application of both the corporate blueprint process and more recently in the Quantum performance management process. Familiarization with integral development processes is being an essential context for successful leadership outcomes.

For cultivating digital leadership with global mind, look around to find out how to bring leaders closer to integrity and authenticity. They are crucial for global leadership. They bring courage, which is lacking so much so often, they bring determination to make things happen, they bring inspiration when you trust what you feel to decide what to do. All leaders need that, in times of durable troubles. In order to develop leaders who can effectively lead global dynamic, it is important to understand what makes leaders effective with global context, with vision to bridge today and tomorrow, and with ability to walk the talk to set principles and examples.





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System Thinking vs. Process Thinking

There are more than synergy between System Thinking (ST) and Process Thinking (PT).
Systems Thinking is how the whole system works together. A process is a smaller part of the larger system. A system is an entity which maintains its existence through the mutual interaction of its parts with a sequence of activities, to keep the coherence of the parts and ensure the required functions. A process is a sequence of activities intended to produce a particular result. So inside the system there are the processes, and process thinking will and must be compatible with system thinking.
System Thinking (ST) and PT (Process Thinking) are both purposeful: A system is purposeful. It can change its purpose and objectives and does not necessarily 'fail' if objectives and purpose are not met. One of its parts is designed to change system purpose and objectives. Also a system can adapt to its environment. A process is purposive as well, you cannot change its purpose and objectives and fails if it does not fulfil its purpose or achieve its objectives. There is no part of a process that changes its purpose - that role is given to another process. A process cannot adapt to its environment - it has to be redesigned using a different process. In the end, ST is for detecting the defects in the design and find out the best strategy to improve it (leverage points). Thus ST and PT, while different, should be integrated in theory and practice, for which we need some, even vague and inexact conceptual model.

Process thinking is more focused & specific; while systems thinking is to see the interconnected whole: “Process" thinking is a series of actions, activities, changes, etc., that proceed from one to the next. Many who believe they are process thinkers believe they are logical and they proceed in a logical progression. "Systems" thinking is an orderly, interconnected, and sometimes complex arrangement of principles linked to form a coherent doctrine. Many who believe they are systems thinkers, think of themselves as seeing the "bigger" picture, or the global outlook, as well as how their thinking may be based on a set of preordained principles. Therefore, process thinking may be considered micro or focused on a specific, whereas system thinking may be considered macro or broad based in nature.A ST system is a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole. Almost always defined with respect to a specific purpose.

Processes are the HOW; the system is the WHAT: To have a system that works, one must have designed the processes within the system to work consecutively in achieving the desired results. Only then can a system be called a system otherwise it is just a random series of activities, neither process nor system. The issues arise on the "emotional" levels - the people who must use the processes within the systems and the processes to connect the system. People are "protective," "resistant," "jealous," "competitive", etc., but the trick is to get everyone to pitch in and find value for themselves in designing the appropriate processes and systems.

Bridge the two point of views: What should you try to do is to bridge the two perspective so that they can enhance each other. It looks like to do this, you need to dig deeper and have some common model that includes both perspective. On people vs systems. In the model as it stays now, people are considered as indivisible entities, systems are complex and do include people. Considering people as systems. Identify the interaction between the processes that may be the output of one process, input of another process and all of the processes interacted to give a complete system. However, whenever you try to achieve desired results without following the natural output , the results may be what went wrong. On the deep abstract level all systems and processes are the same, in reality they fall in different categories. This is why there are and should be different disciplines/fields/theories for investigating them. It is well known that the same phenomenon can be described in different ways that are equivalent in pure mathematical sense but are not equivalent in the applicability sense.
Systems thinking is a visual-spatial, right brain perspective, while process thinking is a focus left brain perspective...they are not in conflict however. Systems Thinking requires a shift in perception to recognize that an organizational ST incorporates interacting, interrelated, and interdependent components of a whole that has purpose across more than one category of system to value add. ST does not need to look at the details of the design such as low level business processes to discover patterns of behavior, thus ST models can completely differ from business process models. There are a lot of reasons why the design results is something different than intended, like gaps in the design because there are no processes to handle certain situations, unrealistic design that could not be implemented in the organizational system, idealistic design that does not take into account limited resources, or that different processes may compete for the same limited resources, which gives the system undesirable behavior.

There are more than synergy between System Thinking (ST) and Process Thinking (PT). Systems thinking is to identify where actions and decisions are having an adverse impact on the outcomes. Processes are essential to make a system “functional.” Without process thinking, systems are the segregated items which live their life without any interaction with their environment which includes the other systems.  Having different views and theories is an advantage. The goal of the current exercise is to find out how the different views are interconnected and complemented to solve complex problems and organizational designs.
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How to make the culture transition from Traditional to Agile?

An agile culture is not the result of scalable processes, but of adaptive mind and scalable behavior.

Agile is expanding its horizon to become a digital principle and philosophy to run today’s businesses. From culture perspective, how do you make the culture transition from traditional to Agile? How do you measure culture in this context? What are the factors that directly or indirectly affect the culture of the organization? To put another way, what are some questions that one may ask the team to measure these factors?

Leadership mindset and behavior: The spirit of the organization comes from the top. Altering how executives think and act is challenging. The most effective approach to organizational culture change is for the leading executives to have a personal philosophy shift. This changes the most important thing -- leadership mindset and behavior. It also flows into what they pay attention to and how they prioritize, lead their team, and deploy management processes. An agile culture is not the result of scalable processes, but of adaptive mind and scalable behavior. A few ways to approach culture shift include finding a volunteer at the top of the organization and getting them interested in a central organizing metaphor and language like, the responsibility process, grooming an agile expert for the top role (agilists are phenomenally disciplined in focusing on value, prioritizing, executing, and collaborating ), or allowing the organization to succumb to market forces and then pick up the pieces.

Culture can be managed via retrospects. Once you identify what is and is not working; then you can get into why? The culture could be a possible outcome of why things happen the way they do. In addition, to just being business savvy with all stakeholders. You must know the unwritten rules of the road to navigate to success. You should consider looking at culture through the lens of people's interaction with one another in an organization (within and across team silos) than from an organizational management perspective. Some of the factors that can affect culture, are: TrustRespect Motivation Autonomy Empowerment

Trust: A company with a culture of trust will have a much easier time for agile transition than one that doesn't. So, "how can the Agile team manage culture more effectively?" Search out mistrust, and try to address the destructive practices one at a time. The transition is challenging and it's one of the largest reasons that "Agile" projects fail. There are definitely ways to manage through it though! The core issue is trust. "Management" must trust the teams to do their work, they must give them the budget they need and trust them to spend it wisely, they must trust them to allocate the work in the best possible way, they must trust the teams to improve their own process, they must trust the teams to change the nature of the product in response to customer feedback. It is an essential part of a truly agile organization.

Respect: The fundamental problem for any negative cultures (inertia, mediocrity,etc) is one of 'value' - how do you value people? If you link this to remuneration, you will have problems. It might be better to start from "respect." Do you respect people enough to treat them same (unbiased) by treating them differently (using different talent accordingly). Highly effective cultures don't reflect their members, their members reflect them; meaning you select team members who are natural fits. An agile culture supports collaboration, one that is comfortable with uncertainty, a culture more akin to that of a research and development environment, is one that the agile approach will work well in. But it is crucial that the mindset of the team members be comfortable with the characteristics of agile methodology. To adopt an "Agile" (not Fragile) culture, it has to be adopted throughout the organization. While an edict from high might help get things rolling, it is not a solution.

Process: Good change process creates good culture within the team. Telling employees why the management is putting processes in place; what values the processes are there to support, command only is not going to give the organization processes that 'stick.' As soon as a person finds a problem, they will revert back to doing things the way they think is the right way. Culture is not something that can be dictated and followed such as a new policy or rule from management. Culture has context and its relative to the group of people that follow it or share a common set of beliefs, such as specialized set of skills or principles. A team's collective intelligence and specialization is rooted its organizational structure, attempting to spawn a culture change at a policy level is likely to result in the opposite, while aligning with an existing set of corporate principles they already share in common may prove to be most productive. Every time a change is needed, the people whose way of working needs to change go through a series of steps: (1) Recognize and understand the problem that is being addressed. (2) Understand the root causes of the observed problem and how they contribute to the observed problem. (3) Understand which of these root causes is being addressed. (4) Understand the proposed solution and how it is expected to address the root cause we chose to address. Outside the team one has less control, but it is still useful to try and bring people to a better understanding of the causes and effects, particularly where there are mistaken beliefs that result in bad effects.

Agility is a means to an end. To what end in your case? Work out what you want agility for. Measure that Agile is a journey, not a destination; it’s more as a "direction", than an "end." Transforming to Agile culture means the business knows the direction they want to go on, and as the people discover new ways of working, collaborating, delivering value, they inspect and adapt in that journey. This in the end may have the effect of promoting culture change organically while reducing the stress that people have from fear of the perceived risk of losing one's job for sharing ideas. In order to manage a smooth agile culture shift, consider such factors as Mindset, Communication, Technical Maturity, Process, Collaboration Tools, etc. Definitely measure and test the direction continuously to make sure the business is on the right course.






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How to Build a Creative Workplace

Creativity is a “domain” contextualized competency.
In recent years, creativity has become a very highly valued skill. Creative people combine existing possibilities to reach more often unexpected solutions. Creativity is an essential building block for innovation in business. Everyone possesses a certain level of creativity; some just have more than others. How does creativity manifest itself in the workplace? What's the best work environment for creativity? What products (tangible or otherwise) are creative? Where that creativity arises from. And what acts, behaviors etc. may be examples of the organizational creative process? What risks are associated with creativity not being manifested in the workplace? How might you see a creativity employee?


Creativity is a “domain” contextualized competency. Let’s face it, most businesses are interested in visible results; then first needed is a tool to assess how creative the business (or employee, department or product etc.) is. Next, specific strategies can be put in place that target the areas identified as "lacking" in creativity. Finally, a tool could be used again to "measure" improvements. Coping strategies for the mundane, painful, stressful, tiring, challenging or competitive nature of many working environments requires to develop often elaborate routines in order to weave some form of personal creative narrative through their day-to-day existence. People have to be given the opportunity to be creative, they have to become empowered. Business leaders obviously aware that a quantitative measure would not be a perfect solution, but the importance of creativity for organizations is well-known, yet there is no adequate way of assessing the concept in the workplace. Creativity in the workplace is fundamentally about the mental production of new ideas - not just any new ideas, but the creation of ideas that are both original and valuable. Everyone has the ability to create, but creativity is an inherent ability that cannot be taught, only developed. In fact those who aren't creative find it almost alien to be creative. Possessing the ability of creative foresight is not a skill that everyone possesses. After researching what happens when business managers use lateral thinking, the requirement that creativity in the workplace also requires the deliberate creation of original and valuable ideas when they are needed - they need to be created on-demand.

The innovators are likely to make change to the structure for better problem solving: The way we manage structure (the paradox of structure, actually) has a marked impact on how we deal with problems and the types of solutions we envisage. The workplace needs to be designed to help employees at all levels within an organization (from leaders to front-line) understand and develop their creative capacity to solve problems and exploit opportunities in new and innovative ways, the tool utilizes cutting-edge narrow band psychometrics to diagnose, assess and train the core four-factors of creativity: namely, cognitive processes, personality, motivation and confidence. The more innovative the employees is, the less tolerant of structure (policies, rules and paradigms) and less respectful of consensus one is. Innovators often prefer to “do things differently” and such major remolding or breaking of paradigms means loosening structure and challenging consensus until the new way is adopted and becomes the new structure or paradigm. Innovators are likely to make a change to the current structure (from within which the problem emerged) in order to solve it. They then make further changes as an outcome of using the solution.

There are two types of measurement of creativity: The problem for building a creative workplace is being able to create a measure that assesses the different dimensions of organizational creativity adequately while keeping it general enough to assess this in a wide range of organizations and job roles. Generally speaking, there are two types of measurement: first type of measurement of creativity at the workplace is through the results, the outcomes of creative thoughts and actions. What value have those new things designed and implemented (products, services, processes, business models) brought to customers or users? There are various metrics for this - number of patents, new products, R&D spend etc. A second type of assessment is through the innovation-drivers, the elements that enhance an organization's innovation capacity. For measuring such, there must be a appreciation in the organization of the sources of creativity as well as the structures and cultures that will promote innovation. Talent, the individual and teamwork are important, so are strategy, system and processes, so are the freedom and a capacity for risk-taking. Innovation management in the workplace is a multi-dimensional pursuit.

Even without formal assessment, one can see that at creative organizations, people are encouraged and given the time resources to work on new things that excite them, all are required to produce new ideas, people are often trained in creative methods and techniques, the business model is often challenged, everyone has a personal creativity objective at work and there is much humor to go around.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Strategic Management: How to Do it Right

Strategic Management is the groundwork for a company’s vision. A strategy delineates a territory in which a company seeks to be competitively positioned to derive economic profits. Strategy is the art of designing a way of navigating and effectively utilizing available resources to attain a clearly defined objective. Strategy management, how to do it right?

Collective wisdom and experiences count: To do strategic management right, businesses traditionally turn to the individual and collective experience to provide guidance and direction. Because any individual’s experience is limited and incomplete, it is inevitable that the best strategies will be the result of a collaboration that includes the relevant experiences of a diversified group bringing knowledge from multiple areas. In today's world, business leaders need to have regular access to a group of peers, with whom they do not compete, and with whom they can brainstorm strategic issues. The value of this type of advisory group in virtually incalculable.
Strategic Management is the groundwork for a company’s vision.A strategy is the vision in which a mission is going to be accomplished. To birth the vision, the problem or purpose must first be defined. This definition can then be built upon through a plan of action, then the action must be assigned and carried out. The strategy should be shared by the entire team. By employing and extracting talent, an organization will be able to achieve anything. The strategy does not stop there, it also must have follow up to ensure that the plan is driving toward the vision. If not then adjustments should be made. The strategy may not always stay the same as the vision can sometimes change depending on how results are viewed. Strategic Management is the groundwork for a company’s vision and allows a company to be ready to capitalize on opportunities. Strategic Management is very often overlooked and should be the first step in defining a company's core values, mission, and product focus; it is fundamental to creating and running a business. Simply put, it’s a game plan that sets specific goals and objectives but like a game plan, it is capable of being changed in response to shifting market dynamics.

Business strategy creates a clear line of sight between the enterprise and each role’s goals and objectives. There's a crystallizing thought about strategy. Strategy is not a thing, or even a state, but a process of lining up the culture that people create to get something done, with the business model they create to get it done. Strategy, in all its forms, depends on team culture and business model alignment, leveraging resources and capabilities in a collaborative way is the key as the world gets more and more complex. Successful execution of strategies also requires the right people with the right skills within the organization regardless of defined role, this includes both stakeholders involved in the planning process and those accountable for meeting goals and objectives.

Strategy, if done in the holistic, or systems oriented way, is usually a disruptive process.
(which is, arguably, the whole point if innovation is the objective). The proper timing of that disruption can make the whole ball game. Also strategies don't just require the right tools, the tools are the last piece. In fact, strategy itself is the last piece prior to execution. The problem is that many organizations do not set the right conditions for strategy to occur within, something along the lines of the right people with the right mindset in the right roles doing the right work with the right interdependence. The key is to have a robust action plan and ensure that this is properly tracked and updated to account for changes in both the macro and micro environments. Communication of strategy is another vital ingredient, communication, in general, is a key for any organization to executive strategy successfully.

In summary: Strategic Management is a process of evaluating a company’s mission, establishing the company’s design, developing the company’s organizational relationships, whilst guiding the company’s plan to execution, to ensure that the management is consistent with the company’s strategy. Strategic Management also enhances and protects the company’s interests, be that financial, reputational etc and defines the way a company wants to expand or where it would really like to focus.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

How to Manage Business Requirements for IT Initiatives

The requirement management is a good starting point and one of the significant steps in managing IT initiatives effectively to achieve its business value. IT is business, every IT initiative needs to have well defined business requirement and well supported business sponsors. What are the most effective vehicles for understanding business requirements? What are effective ways to ensure that non-IT stakeholders are engaged and performing their appropriate roles? Talking to business partners is clearly essential, but are informal discussions sufficient? How does IT get the right executive sponsorship and commitment, who should they be, and perhaps more important, what are the roles that they must play?

Elicitation, Analysis, Documentation, Reiteration and Buy-In: The customers, users and all stakeholders including suppliers, partners, and all internal functions hold a stake in the requirements. Also assume any inputs are incomplete from a holistic perspective and are filtered from the silo's functional view, the reiteration of the requirements development process is most essential to arriving at the "real" requirements. Talk to the people who are using / will be using the proposed solution. Talk as much to the people that will benefit from the new requirement as those who will feel pain from not meeting the new requirement. Sometimes it is the same person. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes it is easier to talk to one than the other, but both are required to get the carrot and stick view of requirements.

IT initiatives are business projects and therefore require participation by the entire business: For this reason, the sponsorship and commitment must begin at the top of the hierarchical authority chain (C-Level), and flow downwards across the entire business as IT may be responsible but does not have authority outside IT. Since the effort is cross-functional, cross-functional participation and cooperation is critical. Management of the effort is only effective within a function. For this reason, they all must play a leadership role and be committed to doing the right thing for the business, not the wrong thing to protect their best interests. If the person at the top wants the initiative to happen and be successful, that will promote the executive staff to be receptive, but it is only the potential value they see in the initiative that will "seal the deal." Until they see value in what IT is doing, the sponsorship will only be "showing face" and there will be no commitment.

To demonstrate the value, collect data and information. As requirements are gathered and managed and discussed with executives and teams, focus on those requirements whose improvement has the most benefit to the business, and keep the stakeholders focused on those requirements and relationships, while the requirements manager never loses sight of all requirements and relationships. Facilitating requirements negotiations is very beneficial to keeping everyone involved. If a decision negatively affects a stakeholder, make sure the stakeholder understands why the decision is the best in the "bigger picture." Depending on the domain and its culture, sometimes a use case model is good for requirements capture, sometimes a formal requirements document. Attempt to get prototyping and/or pilots on the agenda, so client can see tangible results ASAP, and not just models and documentation. Try really hard to get access to the participants at the coal face, where you can learn what really gets done, and current shortcomings.

IT initiatives are unlike others as they are always enterprise-wide, and IT oversights business processes. When it comes to collecting the business requirements, IT needs to take the traceability path of where the requirements come from, and IT requirements need to be functionally structured to serve each functionality the enterprise needs, and it often requires multiple organizations to produce the overall functionality/capability required. To see where all the functional boundaries are and who is organizationally associated with each requires an architect with a holistic perspective and ability. There’s difference between business requirements and IT requirements. IT requirements are allocated to IT from the business requirements. Business requirements drive everything the entire businesses do, way beyond IT, but many of which IT is "allocated" its share of. So IT has to oversee the full set of the requirements to ensure the cohesiveness and to determine all the customers, users and stakeholders and obtain their involvement. Leadership has the responsibility to enable the team and assure it has the capability to sustain the involvement. A formal business requirements initiative led by a capable architect performing (1) enterprise mission and stakeholder needs analysis, and (2) enterprise system requirements development and management, with the initiative backed up by executive sponsorship and commitment and advocated by leadership.

People are the key success factor: The two important participants for IT initiatives are the executive sponsor-the person at the top who has to promote the initiative, and they are skilled at defining the business requirements in a business language describing targets, customer needs and personas, competitor offers, current product SWOT and all identified opportunities. Also the person doing the work has to show the continuing value. They are the key on the success readiness checklist. Without both you cannot get over the "responsibility without authority" barrier. The challenge is really about helping the sponsors, being able to ask the right questions and fitting together different strategy components. However, in reality, more of IT organizations have invested in training and tools to help execute on the project, but many product management organizations have not made similar investments. Agile and other methodologies are pulling the sponsors and product owners in the right direction, it is possible to create a product management framework where product plans can effectively communicate the strategy/opportunities/problems to the developers. It’s important to note this may or may not include any reference to technology or solution approaches, but in practice it helps for the sponsors to understand the key product development considerations (skills, resources, IT roadmaps etc). If this is done well by the sponsors, then a walk through of the business requirements and identified opportunities can be done as part of a "JAD" (joint assessment & design) review meeting to allow IT to begin shaping system/IT requirements. Here's where IT can help the sponsors talk to gaps, assumptions, risks etc; to help shape the prioritization of the opportunities, level set scope and approach. This includes alignment of product roadmaps to IT roadmaps to business roadmaps.

The requirement management is a good starting point and one of the significant steps in managing IT initiatives effectively , it directly impact on how successful such initiatives can not only be delivered on time or on budget, but more importantly ON-VALUE, and reach customers’ expectations.
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