Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1446
March 25, 2015
What are CIOs’ Top Challenges
IT organization with high-maturity not only adapts to the changes, but drives digital transformation in their company.
Due to the change nature of technologies, CIOs seem to be always at the “hot seat” in face of increasing business demand, talent shortage, budget limitation or numerous critics from businesses. Now, information is permeating into every corner of business, what technology is expected to do has changed significantly over recent years, although every company has its own circumstances, overall speaking, what are the common challenges facing today’s IT organizations, how can CIOs leverage resources to stay focus, and continually improve IT agility and maturity, to become an integral part of business?
The "IT Fundamental": “Keep the light on,” is always fundamental for running IT smoothly: IT fundamentals should consist ONLY of responsibility for IT infrastructure, the most important data standards, overarched by IT governance. Many other responsibilities require business justification. However, even IT infrasture is on the way for digital transformation. Digital IT shifts from “T” (hardware technological box) driven- to “I”- information oriented; from monolithic to mosaic style; from “built to last” to “designed for change.”
Bimodal IT: Part of the CIO's role is to run IT as business enabler for delivering the business objectives and strategies. However, from industry surveys, the traditional IT running at industrial speed is too slow to adapt to the rapid changes, their business partners sometimes even think IT is an “obstacle” to get things done. Because traditional IT is more often running as a “controller,” rather than an enabler, leave their business users feel frustrated, or even bypass IT and go to the “shadow IT.” Now, digital technologies (SMAC) provide the new opportunities to run faster, nimble, resilient IT, in many legacy companies, they start to run bi-modal IT by leveraging two speeds - the industrial speed to keep the light on; and the digital speed to accelerate IT transformation.
Decision Effectiveness: The future will turn to those CIOs who will have to find a way via leveraging the advanced analytics to make the right decisions based on low-certainty and over-complexity, in the world with essentially exponential changes, while disruptive technology and business-fueled pressure are turning up the heat on CIOs. In most of organizations, IT is also the data steward that takes charge of business’s information management life cycle. However, information is the means to the end, not the end, the end is to abstract insight/foresight from data, to ensure the decisions can be made by the right people with the right information at the right time.
Cost optimization: Instead of just cost cutting, IT needs to have long term perspective of cost optimization via consolidation, modernization and integration. Thinking outside the box though delivers far better results. First, the best time to lower legacy cost is at the time of the technology replacement or upgrade. Look for replacement that offer the automation, orchestration or virtualization benefits. Increase visibility and transparency of the legacy environment through big data collection; this will provide insight into how to improve efficiency, reduce errors, and optimize costs.
IT Cloudification: Many IT organizations are also on the way for cloudification, you can reduce the legacy costs through automation and cloud-based orchestration. This frees up the people maintaining the systems to focus on more value-add activities. Other approaches are using a standardized modular approach to the infrastructure reducing the differing types of configuration items, applying virtualization and building into the infrastructure additional services via leveraging hybrid cloud solution. The very purpose to going to cloud is not just for cost efficiency, but for IT agility and maturity.
IT talent with learning agility: With emergent Agile methodology and DevOp approach, IT has to breakdown the silo thinking, not only enforce communication within itself, but also harness cross-functional collaboration. IT professionals can not continue to stay in their own “comfort zone,” and speak their own jargon business people can not understand, they have to be in the proactively learning mode to know their division, and understand their business better, because nowadays, every IT project is business project, every line of code should conveys business value if possible, and the project delivery cycle is significantly shortened, thanks for Agile principles & practices. it’s not just quantity, but quality which count for better performance.
Innovation, Innovation, Innovation: Last, but not least, IT has to shift from a back-office support function to a business innovation engine. Because more often than not, technologies are the innovation disruptor, and information is the most invaluable assets in the organization besides talent. The "new" IT workforce needs to be able to self learn and be creative enough, investigate new technologies and software, to be curious about how they can blend and integrate different technologies and solutions, not as technical challenges, but for achieving business value and customer delight.
To put simply, an IT organization with high-maturity not only adapts to the changes, but drives digital transformation in their company, because CIOs are at unique position to oversight business processes and key capabilities, they should play the role as “change agent,” to build the culture of innovation via orchestrating people, process and technology seamlessly, and they are also playing the pivotal role in transforming their organizations into digital master.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Due to the change nature of technologies, CIOs seem to be always at the “hot seat” in face of increasing business demand, talent shortage, budget limitation or numerous critics from businesses. Now, information is permeating into every corner of business, what technology is expected to do has changed significantly over recent years, although every company has its own circumstances, overall speaking, what are the common challenges facing today’s IT organizations, how can CIOs leverage resources to stay focus, and continually improve IT agility and maturity, to become an integral part of business?
The "IT Fundamental": “Keep the light on,” is always fundamental for running IT smoothly: IT fundamentals should consist ONLY of responsibility for IT infrastructure, the most important data standards, overarched by IT governance. Many other responsibilities require business justification. However, even IT infrasture is on the way for digital transformation. Digital IT shifts from “T” (hardware technological box) driven- to “I”- information oriented; from monolithic to mosaic style; from “built to last” to “designed for change.”
Bimodal IT: Part of the CIO's role is to run IT as business enabler for delivering the business objectives and strategies. However, from industry surveys, the traditional IT running at industrial speed is too slow to adapt to the rapid changes, their business partners sometimes even think IT is an “obstacle” to get things done. Because traditional IT is more often running as a “controller,” rather than an enabler, leave their business users feel frustrated, or even bypass IT and go to the “shadow IT.” Now, digital technologies (SMAC) provide the new opportunities to run faster, nimble, resilient IT, in many legacy companies, they start to run bi-modal IT by leveraging two speeds - the industrial speed to keep the light on; and the digital speed to accelerate IT transformation.
Decision Effectiveness: The future will turn to those CIOs who will have to find a way via leveraging the advanced analytics to make the right decisions based on low-certainty and over-complexity, in the world with essentially exponential changes, while disruptive technology and business-fueled pressure are turning up the heat on CIOs. In most of organizations, IT is also the data steward that takes charge of business’s information management life cycle. However, information is the means to the end, not the end, the end is to abstract insight/foresight from data, to ensure the decisions can be made by the right people with the right information at the right time.
Cost optimization: Instead of just cost cutting, IT needs to have long term perspective of cost optimization via consolidation, modernization and integration. Thinking outside the box though delivers far better results. First, the best time to lower legacy cost is at the time of the technology replacement or upgrade. Look for replacement that offer the automation, orchestration or virtualization benefits. Increase visibility and transparency of the legacy environment through big data collection; this will provide insight into how to improve efficiency, reduce errors, and optimize costs.
IT Cloudification: Many IT organizations are also on the way for cloudification, you can reduce the legacy costs through automation and cloud-based orchestration. This frees up the people maintaining the systems to focus on more value-add activities. Other approaches are using a standardized modular approach to the infrastructure reducing the differing types of configuration items, applying virtualization and building into the infrastructure additional services via leveraging hybrid cloud solution. The very purpose to going to cloud is not just for cost efficiency, but for IT agility and maturity.
IT talent with learning agility: With emergent Agile methodology and DevOp approach, IT has to breakdown the silo thinking, not only enforce communication within itself, but also harness cross-functional collaboration. IT professionals can not continue to stay in their own “comfort zone,” and speak their own jargon business people can not understand, they have to be in the proactively learning mode to know their division, and understand their business better, because nowadays, every IT project is business project, every line of code should conveys business value if possible, and the project delivery cycle is significantly shortened, thanks for Agile principles & practices. it’s not just quantity, but quality which count for better performance.
Innovation, Innovation, Innovation: Last, but not least, IT has to shift from a back-office support function to a business innovation engine. Because more often than not, technologies are the innovation disruptor, and information is the most invaluable assets in the organization besides talent. The "new" IT workforce needs to be able to self learn and be creative enough, investigate new technologies and software, to be curious about how they can blend and integrate different technologies and solutions, not as technical challenges, but for achieving business value and customer delight.
To put simply, an IT organization with high-maturity not only adapts to the changes, but drives digital transformation in their company, because CIOs are at unique position to oversight business processes and key capabilities, they should play the role as “change agent,” to build the culture of innovation via orchestrating people, process and technology seamlessly, and they are also playing the pivotal role in transforming their organizations into digital master.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
March 24, 2015
Knowledge vs. Wisdom
Knowledge pertains to knowing and to intelligence, while wisdom has to do with soundness of judgment.
Intellectual transformation is 'the' realization of 'know'ledge to wisdom: Wisdom is not knowledge; one cannot have wisdom without knowledge, but one cannot substitute wisdom for knowledge as well. Wisdom is knowing the truth of it well enough as to be able to discern that - from the choices - as to make the one choice that is seen as a wise choice. Then knowledge is the result of lessons we learned by exploitation of our wisdom! As wisdom encourages to keep on gathering facts (knowledge). Wisdom + Knowledge = life, a never ending fact-discovery mission.
Wisdom is willingness to accept that, there is unknown in life journey: Putting aside all the trained thoughts, systems and boxes, let the open possibility come connect, naturally, the way to attain wisdom is to have an open mind (but not so open your brains fall out), be aware you could be wrong, learn from your experiences and those of others, be aware yours is not the only valid worldview, learn to see the world from different angles.
Knowing what you do not know is at the very least a large part of wisdom; and far too often sorely lacking in people. Wise are those who accept their lack of knowledge and are ready to drop their self created beliefs systems, preconceived notions. Wisdom is learning what you don't know and then sharing what you have learnt. This is acquired over a period of time as you gain experience. Because more often, our own knowledge (or knowing) is a barrier to know more. Wisdom= f(Applying what we think we know, Experience, Learning, unlearning and relearning, Sharing Knowledge and Experience).
Knowledge pertains to knowing and to intelligence, while wisdom has to do with soundness of judgment: Many people do wrong things not because of ignorance, but because of poor judgment, due to the lack of comprehensive knowledge, bias, or preconceived notions. It is imperative to identify what causes manifestly intelligent people so frequently make such poor decisions. Do they lack of independent thinking or critical reasoning? Do they thinking "too fast" without necessary "thinking slowly"? Do they focus too much trivial details, with ignorance of the big picture? Wisdom is to be understood within this context.
Wisdom is about harmonizing the thinking, saying and doing. Wisdom would necessarily be concerned with knowing what to say, when to say , how to say , whom to say, where to say, as well as knowing what not to say, when not to say, how not to say, whom not to say, where not to say... any lapse in any of these would show lack of wisdom, because their instincts erode a huge portion of their intelligence. Mastering what instincts are, how they function and how they interact with human intellect and jointly command everything we do would enable one to consciously manage this subconscious mental trend, defuse this constant and subtle inner conflict to free their intelligence from the tight grip of their instincts and allow their intelligence to become fully functional.
The ultimate aim of knowledge is wisdom. Every bit of knowledge we acquire either increases our confidence, or betters our judgment, or then does both. We have a limited bandwidth, and hence choose to pursue knowledge that will benefit us in some way - an eminently logical choice. We become wise when we are humble enough to be aware of and admit what we don't know and share what we know. Wisdom and humility go hand in hand. So we can not only get older, but also grow wiser.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Intellectual transformation is 'the' realization of 'know'ledge to wisdom: Wisdom is not knowledge; one cannot have wisdom without knowledge, but one cannot substitute wisdom for knowledge as well. Wisdom is knowing the truth of it well enough as to be able to discern that - from the choices - as to make the one choice that is seen as a wise choice. Then knowledge is the result of lessons we learned by exploitation of our wisdom! As wisdom encourages to keep on gathering facts (knowledge). Wisdom + Knowledge = life, a never ending fact-discovery mission.
Wisdom is willingness to accept that, there is unknown in life journey: Putting aside all the trained thoughts, systems and boxes, let the open possibility come connect, naturally, the way to attain wisdom is to have an open mind (but not so open your brains fall out), be aware you could be wrong, learn from your experiences and those of others, be aware yours is not the only valid worldview, learn to see the world from different angles.
Knowing what you do not know is at the very least a large part of wisdom; and far too often sorely lacking in people. Wise are those who accept their lack of knowledge and are ready to drop their self created beliefs systems, preconceived notions. Wisdom is learning what you don't know and then sharing what you have learnt. This is acquired over a period of time as you gain experience. Because more often, our own knowledge (or knowing) is a barrier to know more. Wisdom= f(Applying what we think we know, Experience, Learning, unlearning and relearning, Sharing Knowledge and Experience).
Knowledge pertains to knowing and to intelligence, while wisdom has to do with soundness of judgment: Many people do wrong things not because of ignorance, but because of poor judgment, due to the lack of comprehensive knowledge, bias, or preconceived notions. It is imperative to identify what causes manifestly intelligent people so frequently make such poor decisions. Do they lack of independent thinking or critical reasoning? Do they thinking "too fast" without necessary "thinking slowly"? Do they focus too much trivial details, with ignorance of the big picture? Wisdom is to be understood within this context.
Wisdom is about harmonizing the thinking, saying and doing. Wisdom would necessarily be concerned with knowing what to say, when to say , how to say , whom to say, where to say, as well as knowing what not to say, when not to say, how not to say, whom not to say, where not to say... any lapse in any of these would show lack of wisdom, because their instincts erode a huge portion of their intelligence. Mastering what instincts are, how they function and how they interact with human intellect and jointly command everything we do would enable one to consciously manage this subconscious mental trend, defuse this constant and subtle inner conflict to free their intelligence from the tight grip of their instincts and allow their intelligence to become fully functional.The ultimate aim of knowledge is wisdom. Every bit of knowledge we acquire either increases our confidence, or betters our judgment, or then does both. We have a limited bandwidth, and hence choose to pursue knowledge that will benefit us in some way - an eminently logical choice. We become wise when we are humble enough to be aware of and admit what we don't know and share what we know. Wisdom and humility go hand in hand. So we can not only get older, but also grow wiser.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
March 20, 2015
The Reflective Leadership
What has to be enduring, and what will help the leader endure, would be AUTHENTICITY.
Leadership is about future, what's the future of leadership, shall digital leadership become more open and reflective? The reflective leadership is perhaps like the brightest lamp to come on, with positive thinking and cognitive outlook, and the acceptance of the state of the world not as a static equilibrium, but a continuing dynamic of vigorously opposite forces sometimes, for keeping balanced and continue to move forward.
What has to be enduring, and what will help the leader endure, would be AUTHENTICITY: And paradoxically, the leader can only be true, or authentic, not by ramming his/her beliefs to everyone else, but to realize that he/she will have his/her truths, and there will be many diverse opinions of what's right, and then there will be the common goal. It is important that leaders first know themselves before leading others. If you know yourself, you are also better suited to tackle different challenges that will come your way as a leader; to make you think about what truly drives you as leaders and why. The more you are connected with what you justify as most important and place this "one word" or, in reality the top three attributes (such as authenticity, creativity and wisdom) at the core of leadership principles, the more successful you will be and the more authentic you will come across.
Leadership is a mindset: More realistically, leaders are on the lookout for change, not for its own sake, but for progression. “No” is as much of a decision as “Yes.” Leadership is about many words: Courage, inspirational, calm, open, honest, sacrificing. It’s hard to pick just one. The core to leadership is about bringing the best out in people; helping them to believe in themselves and to be the best they can be in the path they choose. Some choose to become leaders, some choose to work as part of the team as a follower. The leadership as a mindset is "simply complex." Those who can take the obvious complexities being identified and create a message so simple and clear that it reaches not only your mind but your heart.
Any individual who strive and succeed to conquer oneself is a great leader. If we could manage ourselves "holistically" (aligned body, mind and soul), then it creates a huge mind space/power (with calm and sincere attitude in-turn humility) to tap our potential to look at things proactively & profoundly, and add external value which influences many to adopt our best practices to create more leaders. The one word to describe a leadership must be TRUE: - True to believe him/herself and the people with whom he or she works; - True in the meaning of accountability and reliability;- True in the meaning of being sincerely felt, unfeigned;- True in being thoughtful and empathetic;- True in being righteously.
Trust: the one word that might best embody what makes someone a leader is 'Trust.' If we trust someone's opinion or talent in a certain instance, we will be more likely to follow. Earning that trust, however, does not come easily; it requires doing all those things identified previously. It is earned over time. But once trust is earned, it is transient, as is leadership, for it must be earned every day!
Either past, today or future, there's no magic formula for leadership effectiveness, because every era has its own opportunities and risks. However, reflection, progression and innovation are a few leadership principles to groom the leaders for today and tomorrow.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Leadership is about future, what's the future of leadership, shall digital leadership become more open and reflective? The reflective leadership is perhaps like the brightest lamp to come on, with positive thinking and cognitive outlook, and the acceptance of the state of the world not as a static equilibrium, but a continuing dynamic of vigorously opposite forces sometimes, for keeping balanced and continue to move forward.
What has to be enduring, and what will help the leader endure, would be AUTHENTICITY: And paradoxically, the leader can only be true, or authentic, not by ramming his/her beliefs to everyone else, but to realize that he/she will have his/her truths, and there will be many diverse opinions of what's right, and then there will be the common goal. It is important that leaders first know themselves before leading others. If you know yourself, you are also better suited to tackle different challenges that will come your way as a leader; to make you think about what truly drives you as leaders and why. The more you are connected with what you justify as most important and place this "one word" or, in reality the top three attributes (such as authenticity, creativity and wisdom) at the core of leadership principles, the more successful you will be and the more authentic you will come across.
Leadership is a mindset: More realistically, leaders are on the lookout for change, not for its own sake, but for progression. “No” is as much of a decision as “Yes.” Leadership is about many words: Courage, inspirational, calm, open, honest, sacrificing. It’s hard to pick just one. The core to leadership is about bringing the best out in people; helping them to believe in themselves and to be the best they can be in the path they choose. Some choose to become leaders, some choose to work as part of the team as a follower. The leadership as a mindset is "simply complex." Those who can take the obvious complexities being identified and create a message so simple and clear that it reaches not only your mind but your heart.
Any individual who strive and succeed to conquer oneself is a great leader. If we could manage ourselves "holistically" (aligned body, mind and soul), then it creates a huge mind space/power (with calm and sincere attitude in-turn humility) to tap our potential to look at things proactively & profoundly, and add external value which influences many to adopt our best practices to create more leaders. The one word to describe a leadership must be TRUE: - True to believe him/herself and the people with whom he or she works; - True in the meaning of accountability and reliability;- True in the meaning of being sincerely felt, unfeigned;- True in being thoughtful and empathetic;- True in being righteously.
Trust: the one word that might best embody what makes someone a leader is 'Trust.' If we trust someone's opinion or talent in a certain instance, we will be more likely to follow. Earning that trust, however, does not come easily; it requires doing all those things identified previously. It is earned over time. But once trust is earned, it is transient, as is leadership, for it must be earned every day!
Either past, today or future, there's no magic formula for leadership effectiveness, because every era has its own opportunities and risks. However, reflection, progression and innovation are a few leadership principles to groom the leaders for today and tomorrow.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Can you Compare Apple-to-Apple between Different Agile Projects?
Continuous improvement (CI) is in DNA of Agile.
Agile has been broadly adopted to manage projects across verticals, from management perspective, is there any single Agile parameter used for performance comparison between different Agile projects? Can you compare apple to apple between different agile project? Who would be more interested in such comparison, senior executives or team leaders? What do you intend to do with the team that under-performs? And, does such comparison help the team improve itself or compete with others?
By definition, each project (team) is unique: If you look deeper into this there are too many variables which make projects different-team size, technology, extent of external dependencies, experience of team in working with the domain and technology, experience of team members working with each other etc. So you want to find the team's weaknesses, understand its causes, and address those causes to improve your delivery capacity. The finding of key performance indicators (KPI) to compare one team to another is not the best way to proceed. You will be able to find the weakest team (according to the chosen KPI), but it does not make sense to use the KPIs to compare one team to another, because there is just so much variation of conditions between teams. Instead think about using performance metrics as a way for teams to reflect on themselves. Use metrics that cannot be gamed. Story Points are very easy to game. Measuring elapsed times (flow times) is very hard to game.
Comparison is possible, and not necessarily meaningful; only if you are able to normalize across ALL the variables which can lead to differences between projects. How do you normalize for chemistry between team members? There are broad metric that you can track and compare across projects, like how often are team deploying into a production like environment, feedback loops, cost of change etc. One should refrain from comparing project metric like velocity or story points etc. as these are specific to each project and governed by the dynamics of individual project situation. There are methods to assess Agile Maturity, parameters like how we are collaborating, communicating. But these are not for any comparison, it is for improving as a team.
Continuous improvement (CI) is in DNA of Agile: It’s not an attempt to find weakness but to provide support. It advocates CI as key for success in Agile. Any process or people needs improvement over time, you simply can’ have stable process for longer duration. You need to nurture a mindset of continuous improvement. As long as that kind of metric becomes better and better over time, you know you are going in the right direction. Note that at a certain point that metric will stabilize; and that is indicative of maximum sustainable capacity. When you get to that point, strive to keep the teams at the same performance level. Monitor the metric to see if there are regressions or new problems. Always good to know the process, so that you can know the reason for under performance by other project, plus you can have quantitatively defined goals and objectives for each project. Try these metrics:* Flow times* Flow time distribution* Flow efficiency* Work in process* Throughput
"The Value" is the right parameter for comparison: The query is how to assess value delivered to customer. Thinking loudly what are the comparison parameters followed in water fall methods. For example, you have more than hundreds of projects on Agile, you need to have comparison basis which accommodates team size difference, different sprint size etc. If there is a single parameter which is valid for all projects, ideally comparison between projects is not recommended, but in real terms, many businesses do comparison between projects. Senior managers were sometimes extremely impressed with huge amounts of measures being collected, analyzed and processed. More seemed to be better. Especially in an Agile environment, the development staff will take the opposite approach: keep it simple. Two or three measures, probably dealing with velocity and defect rates, should keep an Agile team busy and informed. Senior Managers and external stakeholders will probably be thrilled with excessive metrics that will eventually be tossed, since in their perception, movement is progress. From the perspective of your team, however, such metrics will be viewed as roadblocks to progress.
Use these metrics as a baseline for each individual team to improve against itself, rather than compete with each other. Here are the few basic metrics used for capturing progress: 1). Defects per sprint. All defects will add to total effort of the sprint. If there is no effort bandwidth available in current sprint then postpone to next sprint, as user stories are accepted only after defects were fixed. So all defects are tracked not through its number but effort require to fix it which also take care of complexity of defects; 2). Story points: it takes care of any complexity in User Story. When story points were allocated, it’s based on its complexity. The more complex User Story is, the more Story points are allocated to User Story 3). Refactoring: There are some projects needs refactoring effort.
Measurement is always important, however, there’s no one size fits all. It has to fit for audience, and the purpose for such comparison is to make team continually improve itself, not to compete with each other, and assess the business value delivered to the customers.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Agile has been broadly adopted to manage projects across verticals, from management perspective, is there any single Agile parameter used for performance comparison between different Agile projects? Can you compare apple to apple between different agile project? Who would be more interested in such comparison, senior executives or team leaders? What do you intend to do with the team that under-performs? And, does such comparison help the team improve itself or compete with others?
By definition, each project (team) is unique: If you look deeper into this there are too many variables which make projects different-team size, technology, extent of external dependencies, experience of team in working with the domain and technology, experience of team members working with each other etc. So you want to find the team's weaknesses, understand its causes, and address those causes to improve your delivery capacity. The finding of key performance indicators (KPI) to compare one team to another is not the best way to proceed. You will be able to find the weakest team (according to the chosen KPI), but it does not make sense to use the KPIs to compare one team to another, because there is just so much variation of conditions between teams. Instead think about using performance metrics as a way for teams to reflect on themselves. Use metrics that cannot be gamed. Story Points are very easy to game. Measuring elapsed times (flow times) is very hard to game.
Comparison is possible, and not necessarily meaningful; only if you are able to normalize across ALL the variables which can lead to differences between projects. How do you normalize for chemistry between team members? There are broad metric that you can track and compare across projects, like how often are team deploying into a production like environment, feedback loops, cost of change etc. One should refrain from comparing project metric like velocity or story points etc. as these are specific to each project and governed by the dynamics of individual project situation. There are methods to assess Agile Maturity, parameters like how we are collaborating, communicating. But these are not for any comparison, it is for improving as a team.
Continuous improvement (CI) is in DNA of Agile: It’s not an attempt to find weakness but to provide support. It advocates CI as key for success in Agile. Any process or people needs improvement over time, you simply can’ have stable process for longer duration. You need to nurture a mindset of continuous improvement. As long as that kind of metric becomes better and better over time, you know you are going in the right direction. Note that at a certain point that metric will stabilize; and that is indicative of maximum sustainable capacity. When you get to that point, strive to keep the teams at the same performance level. Monitor the metric to see if there are regressions or new problems. Always good to know the process, so that you can know the reason for under performance by other project, plus you can have quantitatively defined goals and objectives for each project. Try these metrics:* Flow times* Flow time distribution* Flow efficiency* Work in process* Throughput
"The Value" is the right parameter for comparison: The query is how to assess value delivered to customer. Thinking loudly what are the comparison parameters followed in water fall methods. For example, you have more than hundreds of projects on Agile, you need to have comparison basis which accommodates team size difference, different sprint size etc. If there is a single parameter which is valid for all projects, ideally comparison between projects is not recommended, but in real terms, many businesses do comparison between projects. Senior managers were sometimes extremely impressed with huge amounts of measures being collected, analyzed and processed. More seemed to be better. Especially in an Agile environment, the development staff will take the opposite approach: keep it simple. Two or three measures, probably dealing with velocity and defect rates, should keep an Agile team busy and informed. Senior Managers and external stakeholders will probably be thrilled with excessive metrics that will eventually be tossed, since in their perception, movement is progress. From the perspective of your team, however, such metrics will be viewed as roadblocks to progress.
Use these metrics as a baseline for each individual team to improve against itself, rather than compete with each other. Here are the few basic metrics used for capturing progress: 1). Defects per sprint. All defects will add to total effort of the sprint. If there is no effort bandwidth available in current sprint then postpone to next sprint, as user stories are accepted only after defects were fixed. So all defects are tracked not through its number but effort require to fix it which also take care of complexity of defects; 2). Story points: it takes care of any complexity in User Story. When story points were allocated, it’s based on its complexity. The more complex User Story is, the more Story points are allocated to User Story 3). Refactoring: There are some projects needs refactoring effort.
Measurement is always important, however, there’s no one size fits all. It has to fit for audience, and the purpose for such comparison is to make team continually improve itself, not to compete with each other, and assess the business value delivered to the customers.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
T-Shaped Talent with Innovative Thinking
Innovative thinkers are explorers and synthesizers of new world-views, or of future views to the world.
With the border between different functions or disciplines continue blurring, the specialized generalists are in strong demand, or we normally call the “T-Shape” talent, and the innovative thinker -you start with a strong T and then sprinkle heavy dots randomly across the graph with varying strengths of lines connecting them and the occasional pulsing outlier dot. How do T-shaped people feel? What are their emotional strengths and weaknesses? What is their ability to make sense of a situation? Does this "profile-metaphor" take into account fit and affinity, rapport and empathy. Why is T-shaped talent so popular, and how to groom such type of talent?
Many talent people start to build T-shaped skills when they progress through their career. People start out broad and narrow. As they progress through their career, they start to become T-shaped, either because they've gotten experienced in a specific area based upon where they work and the opportunities presented, or because they've established themselves as very strong reputation in particular topic area. As they progress even further, they could become more square or rectangular shaped and become more deeply skilled in many different areas, if they stayed in an area of practice that allowed them to do so. When they started to climb to certain areas of management, etc., those hands-on skills may not get to be put to the task as much, and some of their skills may atrophy, not be current, but they're gaining strength and expertise in new areas as they continue to grow, and build the recombinant capability, like onion -one layer over the other., etc.
The people who helped shape our world are some of the broadest and innovative thinkers: The progress of the world is pushed forward by a select few who were applying agile techniques, using broad and diverse skills to create the impossible. For some reason having a broad and wide set of skills are now frowned upon. Yet it is these broad skills that helped shape the world. As we go through the digital and information revolution, we must embrace the skills of the past to build the new capabilities, and refocus on the problems we are solving and use any number of skills and disciplines to get there. To create the new, requires not just one skill, but many, not just old experience, but the new perspective. However, you must operate like a T-shaped individual, have one skill which is your anchor, and look wide from there. Plus, like Edison realized, you cannot do it on your own, no matter how broad your skills, you still need a diverse team of talent people who help bring all sorts of strengths and capabilities together.
Innovative thinking is a mindset that needs to transcend departmental, even industry, verticals. However, there are collaborative benefits of the co-design approach, so the breadth and depth of the T in the context of a team has to respond to a challenge. That means a blend of skills and experience can be fostered in different ways. In addition, we need the broad exposure and some deep expertise that come with the "T," but we also need strong interpersonal and communication and collaboration skills in order to build an innovative team, with quality like resilience, empathy, meta-cognition, critical thinking, relationship building, agility and community participation.
Innovative thinkers are explorers and synthesizers of new world-views, or of future views to the world: The T metaphor was not made to tell us how much we know about something or how many areas we know about. It was made instead to illustrate a predisposition to diversify our focus or not. Usually we are either "experts" or "explorers." We've got stuck in the T metaphor and we are now trying to say that what distinguishes people is the amount of types of expertise they own. The T metaphor is something invented to talk the talk of managers in over specialized industrial settings giving the notion that one could start using a design way of thinking, leaving the old industrial system untouched. However, the focus should be on the capability of innovative thinkers to contribute to particular professional practices in a specific contexts, rather than to focus on individual behavior or decontextualized skills or knowledge.
The T model is more about resource management, not just about expertise or knowledge management. Knowledge is N-dimensional, skill is multi-dimensional, and responsibility is comparatively most likely to be unidimensional. It makes more sense to think of responsibility being specialized than it does to think of "expertise" being specialized. "Mastery" as being the default state of an expert specialist, but even mastery makes sense mainly in a pragmatic and contextualized way, not in an essentially inherent way. One has to be able to build connections between the areas of specialization, to cross over so to speak. This is like becoming a skilled translator. It is not enough to know each language well, one has to build a network of connections and contrasts between the two language, so that as one translates, one can experience flow.
Due to the hyper-connected and transcendental nature of digital age, either you are expert or explorer, continuously expanding knowledge horizon becomes more strategic and tactical for mastering professional skills and building transferable capabilities. Go broader before dive in, or dig deeper, and then gain interdisciplinary insight to understand things from different angle or perspective, that’s the growth mind adapt to the change and get more popular in digital era.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
With the border between different functions or disciplines continue blurring, the specialized generalists are in strong demand, or we normally call the “T-Shape” talent, and the innovative thinker -you start with a strong T and then sprinkle heavy dots randomly across the graph with varying strengths of lines connecting them and the occasional pulsing outlier dot. How do T-shaped people feel? What are their emotional strengths and weaknesses? What is their ability to make sense of a situation? Does this "profile-metaphor" take into account fit and affinity, rapport and empathy. Why is T-shaped talent so popular, and how to groom such type of talent?
Many talent people start to build T-shaped skills when they progress through their career. People start out broad and narrow. As they progress through their career, they start to become T-shaped, either because they've gotten experienced in a specific area based upon where they work and the opportunities presented, or because they've established themselves as very strong reputation in particular topic area. As they progress even further, they could become more square or rectangular shaped and become more deeply skilled in many different areas, if they stayed in an area of practice that allowed them to do so. When they started to climb to certain areas of management, etc., those hands-on skills may not get to be put to the task as much, and some of their skills may atrophy, not be current, but they're gaining strength and expertise in new areas as they continue to grow, and build the recombinant capability, like onion -one layer over the other., etc.
The people who helped shape our world are some of the broadest and innovative thinkers: The progress of the world is pushed forward by a select few who were applying agile techniques, using broad and diverse skills to create the impossible. For some reason having a broad and wide set of skills are now frowned upon. Yet it is these broad skills that helped shape the world. As we go through the digital and information revolution, we must embrace the skills of the past to build the new capabilities, and refocus on the problems we are solving and use any number of skills and disciplines to get there. To create the new, requires not just one skill, but many, not just old experience, but the new perspective. However, you must operate like a T-shaped individual, have one skill which is your anchor, and look wide from there. Plus, like Edison realized, you cannot do it on your own, no matter how broad your skills, you still need a diverse team of talent people who help bring all sorts of strengths and capabilities together.
Innovative thinking is a mindset that needs to transcend departmental, even industry, verticals. However, there are collaborative benefits of the co-design approach, so the breadth and depth of the T in the context of a team has to respond to a challenge. That means a blend of skills and experience can be fostered in different ways. In addition, we need the broad exposure and some deep expertise that come with the "T," but we also need strong interpersonal and communication and collaboration skills in order to build an innovative team, with quality like resilience, empathy, meta-cognition, critical thinking, relationship building, agility and community participation.
Innovative thinkers are explorers and synthesizers of new world-views, or of future views to the world: The T metaphor was not made to tell us how much we know about something or how many areas we know about. It was made instead to illustrate a predisposition to diversify our focus or not. Usually we are either "experts" or "explorers." We've got stuck in the T metaphor and we are now trying to say that what distinguishes people is the amount of types of expertise they own. The T metaphor is something invented to talk the talk of managers in over specialized industrial settings giving the notion that one could start using a design way of thinking, leaving the old industrial system untouched. However, the focus should be on the capability of innovative thinkers to contribute to particular professional practices in a specific contexts, rather than to focus on individual behavior or decontextualized skills or knowledge.
The T model is more about resource management, not just about expertise or knowledge management. Knowledge is N-dimensional, skill is multi-dimensional, and responsibility is comparatively most likely to be unidimensional. It makes more sense to think of responsibility being specialized than it does to think of "expertise" being specialized. "Mastery" as being the default state of an expert specialist, but even mastery makes sense mainly in a pragmatic and contextualized way, not in an essentially inherent way. One has to be able to build connections between the areas of specialization, to cross over so to speak. This is like becoming a skilled translator. It is not enough to know each language well, one has to build a network of connections and contrasts between the two language, so that as one translates, one can experience flow.
Due to the hyper-connected and transcendental nature of digital age, either you are expert or explorer, continuously expanding knowledge horizon becomes more strategic and tactical for mastering professional skills and building transferable capabilities. Go broader before dive in, or dig deeper, and then gain interdisciplinary insight to understand things from different angle or perspective, that’s the growth mind adapt to the change and get more popular in digital era.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
March 19, 2015
What’s your Business Culture “Expression”
In all the conversations about culture, keep in mind, it is the policies, procedures, rewards and retributions that drive behavior, and it is the employee behavior that expresses "culture."
Business culture is the most critical “soft” key factor to decide business’s success for long term. However, it’s invisible and untouchable; so what’s your culture “expression”? And how to communicate it and measure culture effectively? If there was a system for real-time measurement of culture, what should its main focus be? What aspects of culture would you most want management to focus on getting right and why?
The systems, processes and so forth are the clear manifestation of the leaderships' culture: It is the culture that clearly impacts how those policies, procedures, and rewards that drive behavior. It takes leadership to move things in a new direction and to do that without cultural awareness would just cause the leader to likely run into the same brick walls past leaders have encountered. No matter what they say about values, mission, etc. the behaviors they reward are the clearest indication of the culture they are trying to put in place and they drive and reward those behaviors through the implementation of KPIs, policies, processes, etc. Sometimes, this is inadvertent but it means that the "cultural brickwalls" they may run into are the direct result of the systems they, themselves, have put in place.
Culture management is an interdependent ecosystem that includes many business factors: The company goals, policies, internal control requirements, customer experience improvements / customer satisfaction, etc., all should be synchronized without compromising the need of any item. staff want to be involved in developing policies and procedures to achieve the organization’s goals, but this has to be meaningful involvement and be seen to be meaningful, don`t ask the staff to develop ideas and then ignore their input. In healthy cultures, everyone is a hero to the customer. In unhealthy cultures (employees under-appreciated), only a truly exceptional individual grows in ways that lead to continuous improvement in customer experience. So it is about the systems and rules put in place that drive behavior, and the fact that often the way businesses reward employees has little to do with the stated intent.
Balance is the key in corporate culture expression: Even customer-centricity is the business strategy of many forward-thinking organizations, some could run into the troubles due to excessive importance to the customer satisfaction / experience improvements compromising the ultimate company goals, policies and internal controls. The most effective way of achieving cultural change and improving the customer experience is to keep it simple; and not over complicate the process with irrelevant and unhelpful baggage, no matter how tempting it is to do so. Mission statements / statements of intent in pretty colors and flowery wording placed in prominent positions are utterly useless and counter productive if the workforce know that what is being claimed / said is untrue. The C suites can hold as many workshops and consultation events with staff as they like, but are achieving nothing (except to antagonize the staff) if, during these events, they respond to every challenge / query with "I disagree with you" and don't expand on why they disagree, or make claims that everyone in the room knows to be untrue.
Researching and validating a culture assessment instrument that measures culture from different perspectives; such as cultural constructs or dimensions of culture and cultural styles. The key issue is that culture is always a perception and to obtain an insight into this perception, you need to obtain a spread / number of responses. Only when a broad sample has been obtained can some forms of extrapolation to the group be considered. In Digital Master, we introduce a couple of well popular culture models; the Hofstede Center has an organizational culture survey. It compares the culture to the preferred culture derived from the strategy of the organization. The most important factor in organizational effectiveness, and grossly under appreciated, largely due to a lack of effective measurement; management teams have the data to discuss finance and throughput regularly and at length, but in many cases culture (and its impact on performance) suffers from extensive ignorance and a lack of collective responsibility - largely because of a lack of measurement. With a baseline, you can measure process. Most of culture assessment or measurement are not perfect, but it's pretty good and it deals in trade-offs rather than some systems which propose you can be good at everything. In all the conversations about culture, we need to remember that it is the policies, procedures, rewards and retributions that drive behavior and it is the employee behavior that expresses "culture." Hence, even culture is invisible, it can be perceived; even culture is untouchable, you can feel it; even culture is intangible, you can measure it. It is the character of your organization, and the brand of your business.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Business culture is the most critical “soft” key factor to decide business’s success for long term. However, it’s invisible and untouchable; so what’s your culture “expression”? And how to communicate it and measure culture effectively? If there was a system for real-time measurement of culture, what should its main focus be? What aspects of culture would you most want management to focus on getting right and why?
The systems, processes and so forth are the clear manifestation of the leaderships' culture: It is the culture that clearly impacts how those policies, procedures, and rewards that drive behavior. It takes leadership to move things in a new direction and to do that without cultural awareness would just cause the leader to likely run into the same brick walls past leaders have encountered. No matter what they say about values, mission, etc. the behaviors they reward are the clearest indication of the culture they are trying to put in place and they drive and reward those behaviors through the implementation of KPIs, policies, processes, etc. Sometimes, this is inadvertent but it means that the "cultural brickwalls" they may run into are the direct result of the systems they, themselves, have put in place.
Culture management is an interdependent ecosystem that includes many business factors: The company goals, policies, internal control requirements, customer experience improvements / customer satisfaction, etc., all should be synchronized without compromising the need of any item. staff want to be involved in developing policies and procedures to achieve the organization’s goals, but this has to be meaningful involvement and be seen to be meaningful, don`t ask the staff to develop ideas and then ignore their input. In healthy cultures, everyone is a hero to the customer. In unhealthy cultures (employees under-appreciated), only a truly exceptional individual grows in ways that lead to continuous improvement in customer experience. So it is about the systems and rules put in place that drive behavior, and the fact that often the way businesses reward employees has little to do with the stated intent.
Balance is the key in corporate culture expression: Even customer-centricity is the business strategy of many forward-thinking organizations, some could run into the troubles due to excessive importance to the customer satisfaction / experience improvements compromising the ultimate company goals, policies and internal controls. The most effective way of achieving cultural change and improving the customer experience is to keep it simple; and not over complicate the process with irrelevant and unhelpful baggage, no matter how tempting it is to do so. Mission statements / statements of intent in pretty colors and flowery wording placed in prominent positions are utterly useless and counter productive if the workforce know that what is being claimed / said is untrue. The C suites can hold as many workshops and consultation events with staff as they like, but are achieving nothing (except to antagonize the staff) if, during these events, they respond to every challenge / query with "I disagree with you" and don't expand on why they disagree, or make claims that everyone in the room knows to be untrue.
Researching and validating a culture assessment instrument that measures culture from different perspectives; such as cultural constructs or dimensions of culture and cultural styles. The key issue is that culture is always a perception and to obtain an insight into this perception, you need to obtain a spread / number of responses. Only when a broad sample has been obtained can some forms of extrapolation to the group be considered. In Digital Master, we introduce a couple of well popular culture models; the Hofstede Center has an organizational culture survey. It compares the culture to the preferred culture derived from the strategy of the organization. The most important factor in organizational effectiveness, and grossly under appreciated, largely due to a lack of effective measurement; management teams have the data to discuss finance and throughput regularly and at length, but in many cases culture (and its impact on performance) suffers from extensive ignorance and a lack of collective responsibility - largely because of a lack of measurement. With a baseline, you can measure process. Most of culture assessment or measurement are not perfect, but it's pretty good and it deals in trade-offs rather than some systems which propose you can be good at everything. In all the conversations about culture, we need to remember that it is the policies, procedures, rewards and retributions that drive behavior and it is the employee behavior that expresses "culture." Hence, even culture is invisible, it can be perceived; even culture is untouchable, you can feel it; even culture is intangible, you can measure it. It is the character of your organization, and the brand of your business. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital Master Tuning #61: Can System Thinking become Common Wisdom
System thinking is not just a "privileged thinking" by system engineers, but a wisdom worth pursuing by all leaders and professionals.
"Systems thinking is a holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that a system's constituent parts interrelate and how systems work over time and within the context of larger systems." (Whatis.com)
Although the concept of Systems Thinking (ST) has been coined and developed for about three decades (perhaps even longer), it seems only very small proportion of people are interested in it, ST is not just the “privileged thinking” by system engineers, architects, scientists or authors. Should it be practiced by every leaders or managers, to become a “mainstream thinking”; or, can system thinking become common wisdom, not just “ST wisdom”?
In ST, the true wisdom often comes from a willingness to let go of past learning. In the context of Systems Thinking, there is a huge difference in what ST wisdom stands for - and that is possibly what makes it 'uncommon' in the sense of being difficult to 'acquire.' So, non-intuitively ST wisdom is not derived from 'accumulating' - but in observing the changing context of relationships - and in many cases, that means 'letting go of accumulated traditional wisdom'. That perhaps makes the systems thinkers “struggle,” because it means that one has to make a huge effort to get beyond rational linear thinking - what all traditional education systems groom trainees to do - and the 'rational wisdom' that comes as part of that package.
The underlying principles of system wisdom seems not make so much sense with the rational wisdom: Does it mean system wisdom is complementary to rational wisdom; or rational wisdom is more scientific; but system wisdom is more philosophical? Here are a set of underlying principles of system wisdom:
(1) Today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions."
(2) Every action force has an equal and opposite forces. The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.
(3) Behavior will grow worse before it grows better - or vice versa.
(4) The cure might be worse than the disease.
(5) Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.
(6) Small changes can produce big results, but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.
(7) Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.
The objective of ST is to be wisdom grasped by more leaders and professionals, not enlightenment for a few “gurus” or geeks: Some say, Systems Thinking can only be appreciated by a relatively small finite group of people who have the ability to think conceptually on this level. Fewer really understand it well and even less can practically deploy it successfully. However, as we learn and understand more about our world, the over-complex, interdependent and hyperconnected digital world, which is a lot more complex than we realize, there’s imperative need for systems thinking and system thinkers, to continue to improve it. But will this uncommon sense remain the domain of only a few, or become the wisdom for many? Rational wisdom is the usual meaning of the term 'wisdom' - it means accumulative wisdom that grows with age - or 'learning from past experience.’ But unlearning is more difficult, and the difficulty grows exponentially with age. So ST wisdom is more difficult to acquire with age. Still, getting older doesn't mean getting mind closed, being learning agile is the digital quality for all ages.
The gap between "raising awareness" and "internalization" is not a single step, but requires ongoing communication and effort.
With the advent of modern technology and communication channels, many more people can reach system wisdom with greater ease. The open question is - what are we going to do to change the status quo so that more than a "finite group" understands SD concepts and can use these skills to resolve problems? So to deal with this issue, one can capitalize on raw aptitude by increasing awareness and making it easier for people to apply themselves in a discipline. Dealing with the willingness by individuals to invest effort is a different but related matter, which is the same old human motivation that is at the heart of change management: "why does anyone want to?" Those blessed with more aptitude "see the light " and "understand the value" quicker and this often is motivation in itself. For others they need to be coaxed and seduced - made aware of the value and more importantly, of the "rewards". The responsibility and contribution of the thought leaders is to demonstrate this to them in very practical and real terms that have meaning to them. To leverage the potential of motivation, it can be done in at least two complementary ways. Individuals are going to have to feel the benefits - ultimately on a very personal level - before they internalize anything. They need to experience the feeling that they directly benefit. They will need more than understanding that it is a "cool idea" and have thoroughly-demonstrated, real-life, positive consequences. In change management terms this is aligned the bottom up approach.
The “spirit” comes from top, system thinking needs to be advocated by top influencers in order to be amplified as common wisdom. System thinking is the hybrid thinking process to well integrate analytics & synthesis, strategic thinking and critical thinking, divergent thinking and convergent thinking, etc. For systems thinking going to “mainstream,” the highly influential people, such as political leaders, business executives, educators etc, can be canvassed to promote the idea by reaching them with a "business case" that "proves" the value. Such people may also have to be reached at the individual level first, but will then become strong and effective promoters once they have been convinced to untangle the thorny situations, solve the difficult problems and overcome the digital challenges they face almost on the daily base. Either system thinking is a common wisdom or the “other kind of wisdom,” it is the wisdom worth pursuing.
Digitalization is like a flywheel, and Digital Masters are the one riding above it. Surf more Information about Digital Master:Digital Master Wikipedia Introduction
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Book URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTube
Digital Master Fun Quiz
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
"Systems thinking is a holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that a system's constituent parts interrelate and how systems work over time and within the context of larger systems." (Whatis.com)Although the concept of Systems Thinking (ST) has been coined and developed for about three decades (perhaps even longer), it seems only very small proportion of people are interested in it, ST is not just the “privileged thinking” by system engineers, architects, scientists or authors. Should it be practiced by every leaders or managers, to become a “mainstream thinking”; or, can system thinking become common wisdom, not just “ST wisdom”?
In ST, the true wisdom often comes from a willingness to let go of past learning. In the context of Systems Thinking, there is a huge difference in what ST wisdom stands for - and that is possibly what makes it 'uncommon' in the sense of being difficult to 'acquire.' So, non-intuitively ST wisdom is not derived from 'accumulating' - but in observing the changing context of relationships - and in many cases, that means 'letting go of accumulated traditional wisdom'. That perhaps makes the systems thinkers “struggle,” because it means that one has to make a huge effort to get beyond rational linear thinking - what all traditional education systems groom trainees to do - and the 'rational wisdom' that comes as part of that package.
The underlying principles of system wisdom seems not make so much sense with the rational wisdom: Does it mean system wisdom is complementary to rational wisdom; or rational wisdom is more scientific; but system wisdom is more philosophical? Here are a set of underlying principles of system wisdom:
(1) Today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions."
(2) Every action force has an equal and opposite forces. The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.
(3) Behavior will grow worse before it grows better - or vice versa.
(4) The cure might be worse than the disease.
(5) Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.
(6) Small changes can produce big results, but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.
(7) Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.
The objective of ST is to be wisdom grasped by more leaders and professionals, not enlightenment for a few “gurus” or geeks: Some say, Systems Thinking can only be appreciated by a relatively small finite group of people who have the ability to think conceptually on this level. Fewer really understand it well and even less can practically deploy it successfully. However, as we learn and understand more about our world, the over-complex, interdependent and hyperconnected digital world, which is a lot more complex than we realize, there’s imperative need for systems thinking and system thinkers, to continue to improve it. But will this uncommon sense remain the domain of only a few, or become the wisdom for many? Rational wisdom is the usual meaning of the term 'wisdom' - it means accumulative wisdom that grows with age - or 'learning from past experience.’ But unlearning is more difficult, and the difficulty grows exponentially with age. So ST wisdom is more difficult to acquire with age. Still, getting older doesn't mean getting mind closed, being learning agile is the digital quality for all ages.
The gap between "raising awareness" and "internalization" is not a single step, but requires ongoing communication and effort. With the advent of modern technology and communication channels, many more people can reach system wisdom with greater ease. The open question is - what are we going to do to change the status quo so that more than a "finite group" understands SD concepts and can use these skills to resolve problems? So to deal with this issue, one can capitalize on raw aptitude by increasing awareness and making it easier for people to apply themselves in a discipline. Dealing with the willingness by individuals to invest effort is a different but related matter, which is the same old human motivation that is at the heart of change management: "why does anyone want to?" Those blessed with more aptitude "see the light " and "understand the value" quicker and this often is motivation in itself. For others they need to be coaxed and seduced - made aware of the value and more importantly, of the "rewards". The responsibility and contribution of the thought leaders is to demonstrate this to them in very practical and real terms that have meaning to them. To leverage the potential of motivation, it can be done in at least two complementary ways. Individuals are going to have to feel the benefits - ultimately on a very personal level - before they internalize anything. They need to experience the feeling that they directly benefit. They will need more than understanding that it is a "cool idea" and have thoroughly-demonstrated, real-life, positive consequences. In change management terms this is aligned the bottom up approach.
The “spirit” comes from top, system thinking needs to be advocated by top influencers in order to be amplified as common wisdom. System thinking is the hybrid thinking process to well integrate analytics & synthesis, strategic thinking and critical thinking, divergent thinking and convergent thinking, etc. For systems thinking going to “mainstream,” the highly influential people, such as political leaders, business executives, educators etc, can be canvassed to promote the idea by reaching them with a "business case" that "proves" the value. Such people may also have to be reached at the individual level first, but will then become strong and effective promoters once they have been convinced to untangle the thorny situations, solve the difficult problems and overcome the digital challenges they face almost on the daily base. Either system thinking is a common wisdom or the “other kind of wisdom,” it is the wisdom worth pursuing.
Digitalization is like a flywheel, and Digital Masters are the one riding above it. Surf more Information about Digital Master:Digital Master Wikipedia Introduction
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Book URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTube
Digital Master Fun Quiz
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
March 18, 2015
Inner Strength Comes from Mind or Heart
Stress & extreme circumstances will test us. Hopefully we will survive. And in the surviving get stronger. Until you begin to look inside self to value the strength you never knew you had, you would ponder around: where does such inner strength come from: your mind or your heart? inside-out or outside-in; should you focus on practicing the strength; or strengthening the weakness? Individual strength to collective strength, how to build a strong team?We have strength within: As we begin to appreciate and love our own inner qualities that were perhaps not recognized before except in times of extreme duress. But often we need an outside incident or influence to help bring it out. Then again without that push, we may never need to know. We never know how strong we are until being strong is the only choice we have.
Being self-aware: Be able to see our strengths and weaknesses without self-judgement is possible and healthy. Learning is something that we find hard, but it has to do with our mind. Once you stop mentally judging yourself and do not allow yourself to be judged anymore by others, it saves a lot of worries and negative energy, that you can transform and use to simply be and improve yourself every single day in the area of expertize of your own choice.
It’s best to focus on your individual strengths and practice them: There are times when we do not realize we are so powerful until we create a situation for ourselves that tests us, we create it for the exact purpose of looking within to acknowledge the truth of who we are. Focus on practicing your strength, on the other side, you need to strengthen your weakness, if it becomes the obstacle to stop you from moving forward. If you truly want to expand and discover the talent and strengths then nothing beats the ritual of us getting out of the comfort zone and working on the weakness.
The strength of the team: The team works as a whole with complementary strength: one’s weaknesses will be covered by others - his weakness is her strength. So as long as you are aware of your weakness. it’s not so much of a weakness in practice, in a team context. The most 'dangerous' weaknesses are those you're completely unaware of. In addition to knowledge, a good professional should be able to exploit what he/she knows. He/she needs, that is, the right amount of resourcefulness and organizational skills, proper reputation with the professional community, potential customers and the general public, a prestigious network of knowledge with which to exchange information and experiences.
Success is when you find your inner strength. Our brains are working on full speed when it's time for changes and we get to a crossroad; your inner strength will bring you perception, persistence and performance towards the path you take. Success is something intangible, an inner feeling, the spirit of growth, positive emotions, excellence by choices, respect for all in life, experiences growing up, to earn the trust and respect of the people, always looking for the best in others, doing something bigger than self; being wiser when growing older, these are some components of success.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Is Management Pulling in Different Directions when Implementing Agile
Agile is about three “I”s: Interactive communication, Iterative collaboration and incremental improvement. Compare to Waterfall, Agile process is more robust and adapt to changes; people centric. However, could it cause the other set of problems? for example, how to avoid management pulling in different directions when implementing Agile?
Discover the executives’ mindset: You might not be able to resolve this by dealing only with those managers who are pulling you in different directions. You need to climb up in the organizational hierarchy. Find the first manager who is in charge of all those that are pulling in different directions. If there are many “chefs”: involved, you might need to get as high as the “chief” - C suites for problem solving. Find out what that executive cares about, what are the objectives, critical success factors, necessary conditions etc.. Show how the conflicts that happen in the organization actually impede realizing those objectives, critical success factors, necessary conditions, etc. It requires the executive either (1) to clearly articulate how to resolve such conflicts. Alternatively, ask him/her permission; but it will most likely fail after a while, and people will get back to their habitual fighting. (2) to teach and coach the organization how to resolve such conflicts in favor of reaching the objectives, critical success factors, necessary conditions, etc..it is the better solution for the long term success and getting to true organizational agility and higher levels of performance.
The dialectic tension and diversity of viewpoints: "Agile" likes dynamic tension; people pulling in different directions means that you are having different viewpoints considered, and if you can obtain a reasonable compromise, the solution will be good for all. However, there are a couple of risks. One is that the holder of one viewpoint will have too much power and will ride roughshod over the needs of other stakeholders in the decision. Another is that the competing forces will fail to recognize an acceptable compromise. People pull in different directions for two reasons. Fist they can do it because they don't understand the reasons to go in a different direction, and second they can do it because they understand the other reasons but what they value is different so they come to a different balance point between the forces. If there is unity of purpose and a true Agile spirit while there are different viewpoints, practicing empiricism should help resolve the issue. Devise experiments to try both ideas; and then decide what looks more promising for supporting the stated purpose, based on the information acquired with the experiments.
Another is conflicts of interests. If there is conflict of interest, then there is no empirical approach that will make it go away. You need to get to the "what is in it for me?" of the contenders. You need to work more on developing the unity of purpose. If you can't do that, then ultimately it is the CXO’s call to define what the purpose is -- and maybe take hard decisions, like evaluating if all staffs are really contributing to that purpose. Often when two people want things that are in direct opposition to each other, what they "want" is a specific solution that meets underlying needs. While the specific solutions might be in direct conflict, the underlying needs might not. In such a case it is possible, in many cases, to find a solution that meets both sets of needs. The "compromise" is to step back from one's chosen solution and accept a different solution that nevertheless meets the real needs. So communication is key, get the stakeholders together in one room to discuss their differences. The stated aim is "to help *me* make my decisions", and the guidance is that if we can come to an agreement that all are comfortable with, that's the way we go, but until such agreement is reached I shall make *my* decisions doing my best to take into account their conflicting desires.
So the Agile leaders have to listen to all demands, and decide the path ahead, identifying and acknowledging the needs of all stakeholders and coming up with strategies that address everyone’s need. Agile is about customer-centricity, not about management centricity; keep the end in mind, to deliver products/services, not just on time or budget, but on value.
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Digital Master Tuning #60: Performance Management vs. Change Management
The “space" between the functions/boxes are actually defined by trade-offs.
The speed of change is accelerating, organizations are shifting from industrial speed to digital speed; from inside out - operation driven to outside in - customer centric. When quality and values in your market changes constantly, your measures of P (Performance) have to move with it, better than that, anticipate it and rearrange around coming tastes and preference changes. So performance management vs. change management, how to tone them accordingly for a seamless digital transformation?
Measure is a good starting point to change: Change Management is necessary and challenging when you diagnose the following symptoms, and perhaps measures are good starting point to change:
Change becomes necessary when an organization fails to meet its performance goals, probably as a result of behavior following a path of self-interest."Tell me how you will measure me and I'll tell you how I will behave." People's behaviour usually responds to how they are measured. Does this mean that you are applying the wrong measures at a personal and group level? Therefore, in order to detect that is not congruent with group goals. When starting the change process, perhaps measures are a good place to start change.The problem is actually more complex. Information systems have been built in the firm around those measures. Its systems are more rigid and slower to adapt. Workflows and business processes base on old measures and well aligned with them, are even more resistant to change. This picture puts the practice of change management in a gloomy context.
To make change sustain, the important thing is "end-to-end" performance: If at some intermediate stage, one measures something that is not congruent with the final outcome, then dysfunctional behaviour arises, potentially diminishing the end-to-end performance. People will always follow a path of self interest. That is human nature. In an organization where employees feel disengaged no matter what measurements are in place, real change will never occur, there may be shifts in how processes or work practices are conducted but this is not an impetus for real organizational change. Usually disengaged employees passively resist change, that is on the surface they implement the new measurements / change, however, there is an underlying resistence to the change that may eventually lead to the change program being abandoned.
Measures or KPI is a strong tool, that can be both rewarding but also cause damage to an organization. It's not the use of KPIs per se, but the applications of those that lead to behavior that conflicts with group goals. The appropriate KPIs correctly applied can lead to significant benefits. The problem with many KPIs is that they are created and applied at a subordinate level without taking into consideration the possible implications on the organization as a whole. This way too often leads to sub-optimal decisions which are detrimental to overall performance. Hence, when the need for change becomes apparent, the management should turn the spotlight on measures and incentives as drivers of behavior, creators of sub-optimal decisions and the eventual poor outcomes.
The “space" between the functions/boxes are actually defined by trade-offs. KPIs and measures, inter department economics, and other factors are the root cause of the silo thinkings. PIs are very often functional KPI's, when what is most important is the "end to end" performance ( from order to delivery ) of the organization as a whole. Functional KPIs actually encourage dysfunctional "silo" behaviors, since they reinforce the boundaries between the "territories." Further, driving functional KPIs excessively can actually degrade the performance of the entire organization. Many KPIs represent trade-offs anyway, that you can increase cost in area by driving down cost in another, and vice versa. The performance of the total “system” ( in its traditional sense, not an IT sense), is independent of the performance of any one of the functions, and depends more on how the functions relate to each other, the “space” between the boxes if you will. The “space" between the functions/boxes are actually defined by trade-offs, which are often unrecognized, unexplored, un-articulated, and offer far more potential for improving the performance of the entire organization than trying to optimize or improve the performance of any one function. Further, a meta process can monitor measures of performance validity. But for this, you need first to know your valid updated value offering combination. Actually you need a new paradigm that integrates this meta-process with everyday work into a flexible anticipating customer preference change.
At digital dynamic, performance management and change management need to go hand-in-hand, not only measure things right, more importantly, to measure the right things for encouraging positive behaviors, breakdown silo thinking, leveraging trade-offs, to ensure business a a whole achieving the optimal business result.
Digitalization is like a flywheel, and Digital Masters are the one riding above it. Surf more Information about Digital Master:
Digital Master Wikipedia Introduction
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Book URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTube
Digital Master Fun Quiz
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The speed of change is accelerating, organizations are shifting from industrial speed to digital speed; from inside out - operation driven to outside in - customer centric. When quality and values in your market changes constantly, your measures of P (Performance) have to move with it, better than that, anticipate it and rearrange around coming tastes and preference changes. So performance management vs. change management, how to tone them accordingly for a seamless digital transformation? Measure is a good starting point to change: Change Management is necessary and challenging when you diagnose the following symptoms, and perhaps measures are good starting point to change:
Change becomes necessary when an organization fails to meet its performance goals, probably as a result of behavior following a path of self-interest."Tell me how you will measure me and I'll tell you how I will behave." People's behaviour usually responds to how they are measured. Does this mean that you are applying the wrong measures at a personal and group level? Therefore, in order to detect that is not congruent with group goals. When starting the change process, perhaps measures are a good place to start change.The problem is actually more complex. Information systems have been built in the firm around those measures. Its systems are more rigid and slower to adapt. Workflows and business processes base on old measures and well aligned with them, are even more resistant to change. This picture puts the practice of change management in a gloomy context.
To make change sustain, the important thing is "end-to-end" performance: If at some intermediate stage, one measures something that is not congruent with the final outcome, then dysfunctional behaviour arises, potentially diminishing the end-to-end performance. People will always follow a path of self interest. That is human nature. In an organization where employees feel disengaged no matter what measurements are in place, real change will never occur, there may be shifts in how processes or work practices are conducted but this is not an impetus for real organizational change. Usually disengaged employees passively resist change, that is on the surface they implement the new measurements / change, however, there is an underlying resistence to the change that may eventually lead to the change program being abandoned.
Measures or KPI is a strong tool, that can be both rewarding but also cause damage to an organization. It's not the use of KPIs per se, but the applications of those that lead to behavior that conflicts with group goals. The appropriate KPIs correctly applied can lead to significant benefits. The problem with many KPIs is that they are created and applied at a subordinate level without taking into consideration the possible implications on the organization as a whole. This way too often leads to sub-optimal decisions which are detrimental to overall performance. Hence, when the need for change becomes apparent, the management should turn the spotlight on measures and incentives as drivers of behavior, creators of sub-optimal decisions and the eventual poor outcomes.
The “space" between the functions/boxes are actually defined by trade-offs. KPIs and measures, inter department economics, and other factors are the root cause of the silo thinkings. PIs are very often functional KPI's, when what is most important is the "end to end" performance ( from order to delivery ) of the organization as a whole. Functional KPIs actually encourage dysfunctional "silo" behaviors, since they reinforce the boundaries between the "territories." Further, driving functional KPIs excessively can actually degrade the performance of the entire organization. Many KPIs represent trade-offs anyway, that you can increase cost in area by driving down cost in another, and vice versa. The performance of the total “system” ( in its traditional sense, not an IT sense), is independent of the performance of any one of the functions, and depends more on how the functions relate to each other, the “space” between the boxes if you will. The “space" between the functions/boxes are actually defined by trade-offs, which are often unrecognized, unexplored, un-articulated, and offer far more potential for improving the performance of the entire organization than trying to optimize or improve the performance of any one function. Further, a meta process can monitor measures of performance validity. But for this, you need first to know your valid updated value offering combination. Actually you need a new paradigm that integrates this meta-process with everyday work into a flexible anticipating customer preference change.
At digital dynamic, performance management and change management need to go hand-in-hand, not only measure things right, more importantly, to measure the right things for encouraging positive behaviors, breakdown silo thinking, leveraging trade-offs, to ensure business a a whole achieving the optimal business result.
Digitalization is like a flywheel, and Digital Masters are the one riding above it. Surf more Information about Digital Master:
Digital Master Wikipedia Introduction
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Book URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTube
Digital Master Fun Quiz
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
