Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1452
February 27, 2015
How to Handle Unknown in Agile
"Unknown unknown" is inherent in today’s business dynamic, if it weren't, what you are doing would not be agile.
There are known known, known unknown, unknown unknown, either running an Agile project or managing a business as a whole, the philosophy is the same: to implement business strategy and goals by managing risk effectively. Tactically, it is important to understand what it is that you don’t yet understand. In Agile practice, have you tried to quantify your uncertainty or unknowns? If so how did you do it?
Put some focus on quantifying the unknowns in a story. Uncertainty is an obvious driver in how long it takes to complete a story. Finding a good way to identify uncertainty and quantify it to the team is more of a challenge. One way is to estimate in story points and round up... The larger a task is, the more unknowns there will be and the more likely your estimates are short. To get around with the uncertainty because of not understanding the requirements well, you are attempting “User Story Mapping” with lot of pictures and diagrams. The story mapping is very important for creating a shared understanding among the team members to reduce this uncertainty. Where the rubber hits the road is with story pointing. More often, you will find yourselves to be horribly inaccurate when pointing stories with an unknown amount of uncertainty.
Up-front Analysis: Such analytics helps out a lot of what you started off not knowing. It was dependent on up-front requirements. It was expensive, though at the time you didn't know how cheap the overall cost of the alternative was. And no matter how much analysis you did up-front, there were still things that you didn't discover until later; still new requirements uncovered, and what was probably worse, about a quarter of the stuff you gathered requirements for, expended effort analyzing, and if they are not carefully designed and built, rarely if ever got used. Diagnose the cause of the uncertainty to see whether it is because of not understanding the requirements well or because of the unknowns around the technical implementation. For the unknowns around the technical implementation, you can perform small spikes to evaluate different approaches. Unknowns are also reduced by an engaged team in planning: The more people on your team participating, the more things they will spot or call out.
Each degree of freedom is an unknown: The more you build in, the bigger the scope which is beyond estimability, so the only sensible strategy is to not permit more than a few per story before breaking up the story or digging into spikes prior to implementation. Well-sliced stories limit the degrees of freedom, either you'll be up for known unknowns or you purposefully hit on an "unknown unknown". In the first cases, you can minimize the information gap through exploratory design techniques; certain "known unknowns" can be addressed through a simple spike story. Things like, How does this new interface work? or which of these two methods works better? In the second case, you must spike to turn the unknown unknown into a set of known unknowns, which you can then handle adequately. In the "unknown unknowns" where a user story simply explodes. In these cases, late story decomposition is practical, also identify a value slice that the team can reasonably complete and call that a story. The remaining work can be deferred as a spike and a separate user story.
The focus of quantifying the unknown should be focused on communication and collaboration. There is always a risk of delving in "HOW" when you try to slice it too thin or user story mapping or name any other technique to reduce the risk of unknown. There is also a problem of quantifying an estimate of a story with story points where in it becomes the single parameter driving your whole planning conversation. On that thought quantifying the unknown also will just add to the whole problem. The more "loose ends" the team permits within a story, the higher the risk of encountering an unknown Unknown somewhere down the road. Hence, if you only tend to quantify the uncertainty, guesstimates and story points to get a dummy feeling of being in control. These numbers and the discussions around the numbers, gets the team off track. If the focus is kept on collaborating, learning fast, communicating and course correcting, the team becomes much more productive.
"Unknown unknown" is inherent in today’s business dynamic, if it weren't, what you are doing would not be agile. That doesn't mean you can't learn from the unexpected things that did arise; you may get an ever-improving list of things to keep an eye out for next time. There’s no easier way to quantify the degree of unknown, businesses just have to experiment, learn, practice, practice and practice.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
There are known known, known unknown, unknown unknown, either running an Agile project or managing a business as a whole, the philosophy is the same: to implement business strategy and goals by managing risk effectively. Tactically, it is important to understand what it is that you don’t yet understand. In Agile practice, have you tried to quantify your uncertainty or unknowns? If so how did you do it?Put some focus on quantifying the unknowns in a story. Uncertainty is an obvious driver in how long it takes to complete a story. Finding a good way to identify uncertainty and quantify it to the team is more of a challenge. One way is to estimate in story points and round up... The larger a task is, the more unknowns there will be and the more likely your estimates are short. To get around with the uncertainty because of not understanding the requirements well, you are attempting “User Story Mapping” with lot of pictures and diagrams. The story mapping is very important for creating a shared understanding among the team members to reduce this uncertainty. Where the rubber hits the road is with story pointing. More often, you will find yourselves to be horribly inaccurate when pointing stories with an unknown amount of uncertainty.
Up-front Analysis: Such analytics helps out a lot of what you started off not knowing. It was dependent on up-front requirements. It was expensive, though at the time you didn't know how cheap the overall cost of the alternative was. And no matter how much analysis you did up-front, there were still things that you didn't discover until later; still new requirements uncovered, and what was probably worse, about a quarter of the stuff you gathered requirements for, expended effort analyzing, and if they are not carefully designed and built, rarely if ever got used. Diagnose the cause of the uncertainty to see whether it is because of not understanding the requirements well or because of the unknowns around the technical implementation. For the unknowns around the technical implementation, you can perform small spikes to evaluate different approaches. Unknowns are also reduced by an engaged team in planning: The more people on your team participating, the more things they will spot or call out.
Each degree of freedom is an unknown: The more you build in, the bigger the scope which is beyond estimability, so the only sensible strategy is to not permit more than a few per story before breaking up the story or digging into spikes prior to implementation. Well-sliced stories limit the degrees of freedom, either you'll be up for known unknowns or you purposefully hit on an "unknown unknown". In the first cases, you can minimize the information gap through exploratory design techniques; certain "known unknowns" can be addressed through a simple spike story. Things like, How does this new interface work? or which of these two methods works better? In the second case, you must spike to turn the unknown unknown into a set of known unknowns, which you can then handle adequately. In the "unknown unknowns" where a user story simply explodes. In these cases, late story decomposition is practical, also identify a value slice that the team can reasonably complete and call that a story. The remaining work can be deferred as a spike and a separate user story.
The focus of quantifying the unknown should be focused on communication and collaboration. There is always a risk of delving in "HOW" when you try to slice it too thin or user story mapping or name any other technique to reduce the risk of unknown. There is also a problem of quantifying an estimate of a story with story points where in it becomes the single parameter driving your whole planning conversation. On that thought quantifying the unknown also will just add to the whole problem. The more "loose ends" the team permits within a story, the higher the risk of encountering an unknown Unknown somewhere down the road. Hence, if you only tend to quantify the uncertainty, guesstimates and story points to get a dummy feeling of being in control. These numbers and the discussions around the numbers, gets the team off track. If the focus is kept on collaborating, learning fast, communicating and course correcting, the team becomes much more productive.
"Unknown unknown" is inherent in today’s business dynamic, if it weren't, what you are doing would not be agile. That doesn't mean you can't learn from the unexpected things that did arise; you may get an ever-improving list of things to keep an eye out for next time. There’s no easier way to quantify the degree of unknown, businesses just have to experiment, learn, practice, practice and practice.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
February 26, 2015
Is Innovation the Combination of Divergent Thinking and Convergent Thinking
Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It is often used in conjunction with its cognitive opposite, convergent thinking, which follows a particular set of logical steps to arrive at one solution, which in some cases is a ‘correct’ solution. By contrast, divergent thinking typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing manner, such that many ideas are generated in an emergent cognitive fashion. Many possible solutions are explored in a short amount of time, and unexpected connections are drawn. After the process of divergent thinking has been completed, ideas and information are organized and structured using convergent thinking. (Wikipedia)
"It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does. “-Senge’s Fifth Discipline. Sometimes Innovation is like a breathing cycle: inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, diverge, converge, diverge, converge. Truly creative people use the gap between vision and current reality to generate energy for change. So in order to innovate is necessary to follow a process where divergent and convergent thinking is always present and where you can use different tools. Future vision is one of them, a very powerful one.
Innovation is a combination of divergent and convergent thinking. At first the team needs to go divergent to explore the space (during ethnography/contextual inquiry). It’s best to bring a group of people together with cognitive difference such as different backgrounds, capabilities, strengths etc. together in order to obtain such way of divergent thinking. Then during synthesis, while the team is analyzing the "problems," it will better go more more convergent to really hone in on the "why." Once you figure out what the true problems are and ready to ideate that needs to be divergent thinking. So it’s easier to tame a big idea then to make a small one look more fancy that it actually it. Finally, when down-selecting ideas and eventually prototyping that would be more convergent thinking. Innovation. So, in certain degree, the process to transform novel idea to the business value, is a combination of divergent and convergent thinking, the systematic and synthetic processes.
There is a third and perhaps more effective way to debunk the puzzle of innovation serendipity - generative thinking - that starts with the articulation of a desirable future experience scenario for creative talents, and then allows that to act like a form of attraction or 'pull' as an actualizing potential, spike to both the divergent and convergent ideas and insights that are very likely to follow. The more synergizing co-resonance there is within the designing team, for example, then the more likely that those sudden 'A'Ha!' moments and decisions could flow from this created ”differential” between “what now”and “could-be.”
So divergent thinking is sort of free thinking to keep your mind flow, to explore and question; then convergent thinking will do the reasoning, synthesizing and sum up. Innovation is serendipitous, but manageable; mysterious, but solvable; from divergent to convergent thinking, creativity can emerge from chaos to the order and innovation becomes the light organizations can reach out.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
A Proactive Digital IT
Running a proactive IT not only means to well align business and IT, but more about IT-business engagement.
In today's digital business environment, information is the lifeblood, and technology touches every phase of the business, the CIO must be totally involved and participate in every decision of upper management and be proactive so there are no surprises when decisions are made. Statistically, the firms that have the CIOs sitting with the board or management committee are getting things done faster and become cost-effective in the long run. Or to worth brainstorming, how to run a proactive digital IT?
IT leaders need to be acutely in tune with the business. Due to the change nature of technology, the CIO role is a challenging perch to sit on. Whilst they need to ensure their IT department keeps the lights on, continually improves, provide the IT enablement to allow the business to grow, the CIO also needs to be acutely in tune with the business. There is as much an onus on the business to understand IT, to be aware of the technical considerations required to deliver the business outcomes, to help plan the budgets, predict the financial and resource requirements, understand the constraints and work hand in hand providing support as one organization.
IT needs to be a proactive business problem solver. One point perhaps too often overlooked is that the CIO needs to be a part of a senior team - the business executive and the strategist, the change agent and talent master; for the role to be effective and as such the specific skills and areas of engagement will inevitably vary across organizations as these individuals fill the gaps left by other colleagues. In some cases, there will be a strong technology need that they fulfill; in more mature IT organizations, the development of business strategy should focus on radical digital transformation; in others at lower level of maturity, there are perhaps more of a back office support challenge they have to overcome first. In all cases, the common element of a proactive IT is business engagement - whatever & wherever the business needs are, IT needs to proactively solve the problems with setting priority right.
IT leaders have to reach out horizontally to their business peers. Business-engaged CIO is an accepted leader to run a proactive IT and keeps navigating during rough sea. The CIO needs to be engaged, and at the most senior levels to help influence and shape the business of the future. Whenever you see "CIOs" who are purely focused on cost savings or implementing IT project only as technology challenges, and they are remote from the true business forums, they might still run IT in the industrial mode with silo thinking, without leapfrogging into the digital speed to run IT as an integral part of business. Because digital IT is designed for changes, understanding and communicating the business strategy is a beautiful thing. Without business strategy execution, there is no future and no need for IT. However, the CIO must be cognizant of the internal and external structure designed to provide safe passage to IT-enabled business solutions. These two aspects need to be merged. A CIO, needs to have a powerful toolbox encompassing strong business acumen, soft skills such as communication and listening, technical experience and solid managerial leadership.
Ensuring a high-performing, high-reliable and high-proactive IT is the key success factor in organizational digital transformation. Proposing new technologies would be the final touch. A good relationship between Business and IT becomes visible by clearly defining tasks, authorities and responsibilities. What are the real challenges of a CIO to build a high-performing IT? - The main part of the IT budget is sunk in the existing IT-systems for keeping the light on.- Regular system updates are challenging the existing IT continuously. - New systems are difficult to implant into existing processes and system flows. - New technologies arise so fast that it is hard to catch-up with speed. - GRC Management is more crucial in today's digital dynamic.
IT-Business proactive interaction, communication and cross-functional collaboration is strategic imperative. The management best practices include, but limited to: The proactive IT leaders and sponsors attend business reviews with the various business stakeholders in attendance and equally invited those business stakeholders to their IT forums. These sponsors lead discussions with the business to share IT innovation, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats present within IT, they listen to the business to understand the issues, put in action plans to help, review the business plans and strategy and work within IT to drive the value and outcomes to meet the business objectives. Where these types of interactions are sustained, year on year, openly reviewed and improved, such interactions force a close collaboration and better understanding of each other's worlds and IT is able to influence and contribute to corporate strategy.
Hence, running a proactive IT not only means to well align business and IT, but more about IT-business engagement, not only about providing IT service to the business users; but more about how to solve the key business problems to benefit end customers as well; not only about IT taking the order from the business; but more about CIOs as rule co-maker, to have a seat in the strategic meeting and make substantial contribution for strategy making and governance practices.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
In today's digital business environment, information is the lifeblood, and technology touches every phase of the business, the CIO must be totally involved and participate in every decision of upper management and be proactive so there are no surprises when decisions are made. Statistically, the firms that have the CIOs sitting with the board or management committee are getting things done faster and become cost-effective in the long run. Or to worth brainstorming, how to run a proactive digital IT?IT leaders need to be acutely in tune with the business. Due to the change nature of technology, the CIO role is a challenging perch to sit on. Whilst they need to ensure their IT department keeps the lights on, continually improves, provide the IT enablement to allow the business to grow, the CIO also needs to be acutely in tune with the business. There is as much an onus on the business to understand IT, to be aware of the technical considerations required to deliver the business outcomes, to help plan the budgets, predict the financial and resource requirements, understand the constraints and work hand in hand providing support as one organization.
IT needs to be a proactive business problem solver. One point perhaps too often overlooked is that the CIO needs to be a part of a senior team - the business executive and the strategist, the change agent and talent master; for the role to be effective and as such the specific skills and areas of engagement will inevitably vary across organizations as these individuals fill the gaps left by other colleagues. In some cases, there will be a strong technology need that they fulfill; in more mature IT organizations, the development of business strategy should focus on radical digital transformation; in others at lower level of maturity, there are perhaps more of a back office support challenge they have to overcome first. In all cases, the common element of a proactive IT is business engagement - whatever & wherever the business needs are, IT needs to proactively solve the problems with setting priority right.
IT leaders have to reach out horizontally to their business peers. Business-engaged CIO is an accepted leader to run a proactive IT and keeps navigating during rough sea. The CIO needs to be engaged, and at the most senior levels to help influence and shape the business of the future. Whenever you see "CIOs" who are purely focused on cost savings or implementing IT project only as technology challenges, and they are remote from the true business forums, they might still run IT in the industrial mode with silo thinking, without leapfrogging into the digital speed to run IT as an integral part of business. Because digital IT is designed for changes, understanding and communicating the business strategy is a beautiful thing. Without business strategy execution, there is no future and no need for IT. However, the CIO must be cognizant of the internal and external structure designed to provide safe passage to IT-enabled business solutions. These two aspects need to be merged. A CIO, needs to have a powerful toolbox encompassing strong business acumen, soft skills such as communication and listening, technical experience and solid managerial leadership.
Ensuring a high-performing, high-reliable and high-proactive IT is the key success factor in organizational digital transformation. Proposing new technologies would be the final touch. A good relationship between Business and IT becomes visible by clearly defining tasks, authorities and responsibilities. What are the real challenges of a CIO to build a high-performing IT? - The main part of the IT budget is sunk in the existing IT-systems for keeping the light on.- Regular system updates are challenging the existing IT continuously. - New systems are difficult to implant into existing processes and system flows. - New technologies arise so fast that it is hard to catch-up with speed. - GRC Management is more crucial in today's digital dynamic.
IT-Business proactive interaction, communication and cross-functional collaboration is strategic imperative. The management best practices include, but limited to: The proactive IT leaders and sponsors attend business reviews with the various business stakeholders in attendance and equally invited those business stakeholders to their IT forums. These sponsors lead discussions with the business to share IT innovation, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats present within IT, they listen to the business to understand the issues, put in action plans to help, review the business plans and strategy and work within IT to drive the value and outcomes to meet the business objectives. Where these types of interactions are sustained, year on year, openly reviewed and improved, such interactions force a close collaboration and better understanding of each other's worlds and IT is able to influence and contribute to corporate strategy.
Hence, running a proactive IT not only means to well align business and IT, but more about IT-business engagement, not only about providing IT service to the business users; but more about how to solve the key business problems to benefit end customers as well; not only about IT taking the order from the business; but more about CIOs as rule co-maker, to have a seat in the strategic meeting and make substantial contribution for strategy making and governance practices.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital Master Tuning XXXXVIII: How to Make Strategy Work under Uncertainty
The challenge is in finding the appropriate balance between stability and adaptability.
VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) is digital new normal, as complexity and uncertainty increasing, the connection between any single individual organization’s strategy, and their tactical plans and actions can become diluted and disconnected. How to craft a good strategy, and make strategy executable under such uncertainty and unpredictability in order to transform business into the Digital Master?
Strategy formulation is a combination of planned and emergent thinking. You formulate a strategy and then encounter the real world of implementation, which provides you feedback that allows you to continuously adjust the strategy on the move. Just like a sculptor in the process of shaping a piece of artwork, he or she has a strategy in mind at the outset of the process; but as his/her hands interact with the material the strategy is constantly adjusted until the final artwork is presented. The greater that conditions of uncertainty prevail, the more likely it is that the final strategy will be a product of emergent thinking rather than the original formulation. You concentrate on the objectives of your organization, and make sure that the roles and functions are stated perfectly. You can develop a strategic plan based on the improvement of the real situation by analyzing the mandate and extract policies that enable you to make the vision and missions, then to make the smart objectives, policies and programs that solve your developments problems.
The challenge is in finding the appropriate balance between stability and adaptability. It's tough to make changes, particularly in large organizations with vested resources and cultures supporting "the way things have always been done." An organization needs to have a “healthy” feedback loop so that signals from the operating environment can be interpreted as objectively as possible. When actual results vary significantly from plans, a common mistake that large organizations make is to devote the resources necessary to correct actions in order to get back on the original track. Significant variation from the planned result may, in fact, be a signal that the original plan is flawed; that a major shift in the environment has occurred, which necessitates rethinking the plan. To continue to invest resource to get back on a course that is obsolete, could be extremely expensive. This is tough to recognize in an organization whose management has invested not only resources but their own self-identity in pursuing the original plan.
It is important to distinguish between conditions of 'known risk' vs. 'critical uncertainty.' When you are formulating strategies under conditions of known risk, you have sufficient information to establish probabilities of alternative outcomes, and the expected impact of strategy alternatives. Hence, probability x size of expected impact = estimated value of the alternative. However, "critical uncertainties," is the unknowns below the tip of the iceberg with utmost relevance for the organization or entity you're planning for. So conditions of known risk are amenable to constructing alternative scenarios and evaluating them. It might be good to work with plans and assumptions and scenarios, as long you keep in mind that these have been elaborated from past experiences and past knowledge. If it is really unpredictable, that means the future cannot be, in any way, deduced from the past. As such, it becomes far more about influencing others to choose to allow/enable the success of your strategic goals. Additionally actions can become counter productive over time, or cease to work as the character of the environment shifts and co-evolves. Strategies can be ineffective because they were once effective, and the other actors have evolved counter strategies.
To "be opportunistic" could also be expressed as: stay curious, especially for the unexpected; even the unwanted - in order to recognize the emergence of completely new phenomenons. Admit that disruptive events may occur. Learn to stay alert and to observe with subtlety and learn fast. Strategy is about overall direction, and the direction from current market to future market is anything but a straight line. Thus, there will be several short-term changes in direction that could slow the long-term direction, but does not cause a 180 degree turn. In times of uncertainty and unpredictability, one must be opportunistic and agile within a general strategy, and adapt one's plans to fit the emerging environment while staying the overall course. Further, strategy is just as much about knowing what you will not do as it is about knowing what you will do. Stay within what you will do in the strategic forum, but change some priorities or weight of effort in the short term, be opportunistic about emerging event, and you will reach your goal. So it is not about the plan; rather, it is about the planning process that you will go through continuously as you implement the strategy.
It’s about agile strategy-execution cycle. It's not all about "making a strategy" as end-product, but about implementing it afterwards. It is also about communicating about the quality of the strategy, saying openly what is known and what is not. So to not feed the illusion of knowing and controlling everything. Furthermore, the process of elaborating the strategy is as much, if not more important as the result of the strategy itself. The process should be participative in order to take advantage of the collective intelligence. But also in order to build and share a common understanding of the situation and a common vision of what is to be attained. The participants should be the ones in charge of the later implementation of the strategy. The process should be set so to establish and enforce trust among participants, to train the participants to sustain together uncertainty and fear, to fail together, to learn together.
Flexibility in strategy execution: So, uncertainty simply requires more planning and more flexibility in implementing. When you are forced to formulate strategy under conditions of 'uncertainty,' you are operating in "white water" with little or no information on which to base your strategic decisions. In such cases, strategy formulation must be based on assumptions that your organization can change the operating environment - and not just adapt to it. Another manifestation of uncertainty is when you are negotiating strategy with stakeholders who hold opposite viewpoints. Making a strategy in times of uncertainty and unpredictability is an interesting way of putting things right, "plan, but be able to adapt quickly to current realities. Any planning process is based on a number of assumptions, and when any of your previous assumptions are proven wrong, then one must review the plan to ascertain if it is still valid. That is why a combination of planning and scenario development is best in these sorts of conditions. The scenarios give one an idea of what could happen; but more importantly, they expose signposts that show which future (or combination of future scenarios) is unfolding.
Digital organizational structure involves networks than hierarchies. In chaotic and complex environments, appropriate strategic responses involve networks rather than hierarchies. The top down strategic planning approach does not work well in a diverse, mobile, complex digital environment. Strategic plans are not sufficiently, agile Strategists must acknowledge that in a networked situation, strategy is formulated and adjusted through the interaction of several decision nodes that are richly connected with each other through ongoing streams of information. Strategies emerge through network interaction. The astute strategist learns how to leverage the network by developing approaches for shepherding strategy implementation through a process of influence, capitalizing on temporary power coalitions and data-driven solutions. Feedback and adjustment become pervasive throughout the network - rather than one step in a structured planning and evaluation process. The study found that hierarchies can be accommodated in network approaches. For example, shifting decision rights down and across the levels of recursion closer to the populace and forming richly connected people-networks at each level with the environment is one necessity. This theoretically allows for rapid adjustment and self-organization but only if information distribution and feedback is sufficiently accurate to base decisions upon.
"There should be a zero degree of uncertainty" is a wishful thinking that does not help while facing a digital reality that is uncertain and unpredictable. It is more crucial to set directions, principles and value right, instead of rigid process and fixed strategic axis. So strategy planning is more about changing minds, fostering collective intelligence, involving emergent thinking, and be flexible in strategy implementation.
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 QuizFollow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) is digital new normal, as complexity and uncertainty increasing, the connection between any single individual organization’s strategy, and their tactical plans and actions can become diluted and disconnected. How to craft a good strategy, and make strategy executable under such uncertainty and unpredictability in order to transform business into the Digital Master?
Strategy formulation is a combination of planned and emergent thinking. You formulate a strategy and then encounter the real world of implementation, which provides you feedback that allows you to continuously adjust the strategy on the move. Just like a sculptor in the process of shaping a piece of artwork, he or she has a strategy in mind at the outset of the process; but as his/her hands interact with the material the strategy is constantly adjusted until the final artwork is presented. The greater that conditions of uncertainty prevail, the more likely it is that the final strategy will be a product of emergent thinking rather than the original formulation. You concentrate on the objectives of your organization, and make sure that the roles and functions are stated perfectly. You can develop a strategic plan based on the improvement of the real situation by analyzing the mandate and extract policies that enable you to make the vision and missions, then to make the smart objectives, policies and programs that solve your developments problems.
The challenge is in finding the appropriate balance between stability and adaptability. It's tough to make changes, particularly in large organizations with vested resources and cultures supporting "the way things have always been done." An organization needs to have a “healthy” feedback loop so that signals from the operating environment can be interpreted as objectively as possible. When actual results vary significantly from plans, a common mistake that large organizations make is to devote the resources necessary to correct actions in order to get back on the original track. Significant variation from the planned result may, in fact, be a signal that the original plan is flawed; that a major shift in the environment has occurred, which necessitates rethinking the plan. To continue to invest resource to get back on a course that is obsolete, could be extremely expensive. This is tough to recognize in an organization whose management has invested not only resources but their own self-identity in pursuing the original plan.
It is important to distinguish between conditions of 'known risk' vs. 'critical uncertainty.' When you are formulating strategies under conditions of known risk, you have sufficient information to establish probabilities of alternative outcomes, and the expected impact of strategy alternatives. Hence, probability x size of expected impact = estimated value of the alternative. However, "critical uncertainties," is the unknowns below the tip of the iceberg with utmost relevance for the organization or entity you're planning for. So conditions of known risk are amenable to constructing alternative scenarios and evaluating them. It might be good to work with plans and assumptions and scenarios, as long you keep in mind that these have been elaborated from past experiences and past knowledge. If it is really unpredictable, that means the future cannot be, in any way, deduced from the past. As such, it becomes far more about influencing others to choose to allow/enable the success of your strategic goals. Additionally actions can become counter productive over time, or cease to work as the character of the environment shifts and co-evolves. Strategies can be ineffective because they were once effective, and the other actors have evolved counter strategies.
To "be opportunistic" could also be expressed as: stay curious, especially for the unexpected; even the unwanted - in order to recognize the emergence of completely new phenomenons. Admit that disruptive events may occur. Learn to stay alert and to observe with subtlety and learn fast. Strategy is about overall direction, and the direction from current market to future market is anything but a straight line. Thus, there will be several short-term changes in direction that could slow the long-term direction, but does not cause a 180 degree turn. In times of uncertainty and unpredictability, one must be opportunistic and agile within a general strategy, and adapt one's plans to fit the emerging environment while staying the overall course. Further, strategy is just as much about knowing what you will not do as it is about knowing what you will do. Stay within what you will do in the strategic forum, but change some priorities or weight of effort in the short term, be opportunistic about emerging event, and you will reach your goal. So it is not about the plan; rather, it is about the planning process that you will go through continuously as you implement the strategy.
It’s about agile strategy-execution cycle. It's not all about "making a strategy" as end-product, but about implementing it afterwards. It is also about communicating about the quality of the strategy, saying openly what is known and what is not. So to not feed the illusion of knowing and controlling everything. Furthermore, the process of elaborating the strategy is as much, if not more important as the result of the strategy itself. The process should be participative in order to take advantage of the collective intelligence. But also in order to build and share a common understanding of the situation and a common vision of what is to be attained. The participants should be the ones in charge of the later implementation of the strategy. The process should be set so to establish and enforce trust among participants, to train the participants to sustain together uncertainty and fear, to fail together, to learn together.
Flexibility in strategy execution: So, uncertainty simply requires more planning and more flexibility in implementing. When you are forced to formulate strategy under conditions of 'uncertainty,' you are operating in "white water" with little or no information on which to base your strategic decisions. In such cases, strategy formulation must be based on assumptions that your organization can change the operating environment - and not just adapt to it. Another manifestation of uncertainty is when you are negotiating strategy with stakeholders who hold opposite viewpoints. Making a strategy in times of uncertainty and unpredictability is an interesting way of putting things right, "plan, but be able to adapt quickly to current realities. Any planning process is based on a number of assumptions, and when any of your previous assumptions are proven wrong, then one must review the plan to ascertain if it is still valid. That is why a combination of planning and scenario development is best in these sorts of conditions. The scenarios give one an idea of what could happen; but more importantly, they expose signposts that show which future (or combination of future scenarios) is unfolding.
Digital organizational structure involves networks than hierarchies. In chaotic and complex environments, appropriate strategic responses involve networks rather than hierarchies. The top down strategic planning approach does not work well in a diverse, mobile, complex digital environment. Strategic plans are not sufficiently, agile Strategists must acknowledge that in a networked situation, strategy is formulated and adjusted through the interaction of several decision nodes that are richly connected with each other through ongoing streams of information. Strategies emerge through network interaction. The astute strategist learns how to leverage the network by developing approaches for shepherding strategy implementation through a process of influence, capitalizing on temporary power coalitions and data-driven solutions. Feedback and adjustment become pervasive throughout the network - rather than one step in a structured planning and evaluation process. The study found that hierarchies can be accommodated in network approaches. For example, shifting decision rights down and across the levels of recursion closer to the populace and forming richly connected people-networks at each level with the environment is one necessity. This theoretically allows for rapid adjustment and self-organization but only if information distribution and feedback is sufficiently accurate to base decisions upon.
"There should be a zero degree of uncertainty" is a wishful thinking that does not help while facing a digital reality that is uncertain and unpredictable. It is more crucial to set directions, principles and value right, instead of rigid process and fixed strategic axis. So strategy planning is more about changing minds, fostering collective intelligence, involving emergent thinking, and be flexible in strategy implementation.
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 QuizFollow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
February 25, 2015
A Trustful Mind
TRUST is a collective mind - the corporate culture. You can't build and nourish trust without creating a conducive environment of trust.
The progressive business relationship and society are built on mutual trust and respect, not power and ownership. We do not own others and therefore should not believe we have power over them. Is trust more as a mindset or a behavior?
Trust starts within oneself, the mind, and grows outward to the people and the environment; just like change. But regular reflection is required to keep foundational truths fresh in our minds so that we are alert to the level of trust in our personal relationships and across our organization. It's trust that is the key determinant for any collaborative effort; and conversely, the lack of it that can accurately predict the demise of any collaborative effort. Creating and nurturing that trust is one of those precious things that takes chunks out of our diminishing currency of time in the world of work. To build and maintain trust requires respect, repeat, predictable behavior: dependability, the fulfillment of promises. All these things take time.
Mutual trust is that linchpin without which leadership is hollow and ineffective. The more we understand its vitality and the anatomy, the better will be our ability to lead in different situations. If there isn't anything more important in human relationships than trust then consideration of trust should be part of every decision. Will the decisions enhance trust (personal and organizational), erode it, or have no impact. We all know beyond any shadow of doubt that mutual trust is paramount for our personal and organizational effectiveness. And each one of us has pretty good ideas how to cultivate trust. Despite that knowledge and sincerity, mistrust continues to flourish in our personal and organizational lives.
To be able to trust you must also have the courage to learn when you fail; which we all do every now and then, take responsibility for the failure, learn from it and move forward. Blaming others instead of recognizing and taking responsibility for a failure in any affair one is involved in will ultimately destroy any existing trust. When a leader acknowledges and takes responsibility for his/her failures the followers dare to fail as well by knowing that if they take responsibility for the failures, the leaders will continue to support them in their work.
Trust is not straightforward, but multifaceted. There are many definitions of trust and what trust entails including vulnerability-based trust, role-based trust, reciprocity. Role based trust happens when we each attribute different meanings to trust and assign trust because of a person’s role. Reciprocity is an important part of building trust and allows predictability and stability in the relationship. Reciprocity works because of shared goals, which create less stress on the relationship. Incorporating competition into a relationship erodes trust. Cooperation has been shown to create a win-win situation. Trust is something we invest in based on our experiences, whatever the context.
Leadership mindset and behavior has been found to be the most influential elements in building trust; such as integrity, authenticity, self-awareness, empathy, high EQ; and communicating effectively also helps to build trust with your direct reports, stakeholders and colleagues. Why does building trust matter? Because otherwise you will not have an engaged or productive staff. The creation of trust is not something that occurs overnight. And leadership is complex, composed of varied and multiple traits/skill sets/actions. Knowing which ones to use in what combination in each particular situation is what defines a leader, and it is the same with trust.
Mutual trust becomes much easier if one of the two or more parties give trust by respecting with each other. It is very difficult for someone to trust you if they do not believe you respect them, and probably vice verse as well. Understand what people can and do contribute and acknowledge it as a starting point for respect. Then remember delegation is trust. Allowing people to try and fail is about giving trust. If you trust them and they fail, you simply sit down and address why the failure occurred in a safe environment because they don't fear having to earn your trust.
“Trust but verify" is easy to live by; but ignoring the impact on that micromanagement of your teams decisions and outputs can create a negative impact on the bottom line whether it is easily visible or not. You can't build and nourish trust without creating a conducive environment of trust. The key to trust is to establish trustworthiness as a character trait. Trust is vital for betterment of the human existence and providing competitive advantage for business. As imperfect may be our civilization and our organizations, mutual trust definitely makes them better and better.
The true trust is multidimensional. It encompasses trusting self, trusting others, and earning the trust of others. All of these three dimensions are vital to build/nurture/repair mutual trust. Building trust is an ongoing and never ending endeavor. What a challenge it is building trust, but how worthwhile, and how essential. Building/nurturing mutual trust is not an overnight phenomenon, but starting with a trustful mind with a constant commitment with consistent actions.
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Digital Master Tuning XXXXVII: Is your IT organization as responsive as it needs to be?
IT organization just has to continuously reinvent itself to adapt to the digital disruption.
Due to the accelerating speed of business change and “disruptive” nature of digital technology, IT organizations just have to continually reinvent itself to adapt to the changes, and IT leaders also have to re-imagine their leadership influence and effectiveness. Is your IT organization as responsive as it needs to be for organization growing as a Digital Master? And how can CIOs provide digital leadership in face of such digital disruption, to improve CIO tenure longevity and systematically driving the radical digitalization of their organizations and beyond?
The main issue is the dynamic between running the IT utility and building a strategic IT. In most organizations no matter how good a CIO is focusing on and influencing business innovation, if the IT operations does not run flawlessly, their reputation, influence and longevity within the organization will be impacted. Businesses also have to empower their CIOs to co-create strategy and encourage IT to become an innovation engine to gain business competency. Until organizations mentally and culturally separate the CIO role from IT operations, CIOs will be always undone by operational failures (in their control or not). To put simply, building a strategic IT is not just CIO's job, but the collaborative effort of the whole senior executive team.
IT plays forerunning role in digital transformation. Digital IT leaders, meaning companies that lead in digital transformation, are much more likely to have a senior executive team who understands digital opportunities and threats and who builds that into his/her strategy & communication. Digital IT is running in much faster speed. Laggard companies often have a CXO team or board of directors who are comfortable doing things the old way and view IT as purely a support organization. It's very tough for CIO to drive transformation if that is the case. And IT still runs in industrial speed in those organizations.
People – Back to the three fundamental elements in business: People, Process and Technology. As IT leaders, you can ask two simple questions of every IT team member within your organization: What business value are you helping to create? Which business team members determine the priority of your work? If you don’t receive straight forward, consistent responses, you might have a problem with alignment, and accountability – most likely across IT and Business.
Process - Ask your team what you’re working on? When will business users be able to use it? What will you work on next? Same drill as before, if you don’t get clear and consistent replies – you have to work with the Business and IT areas within the area of concern. No matter whether this area’s Agile, Waterfall,. . ., the expectation is that all active and planned work is visible, including key schedule expectations, and project priority.
Technology – For the area of Responsiveness and Technology, the most important questions CIOs can ask their business partners are: Are there any tools your competitors use that you need to look at? Are your tools simple to use? These questions help show a willingness to engage people outside of IT on how best to solve a problem, or achieve an opportunity.
Don't forget about 'measurement.' Make it easy and enjoyable to monitor progress and outcome of initiatives. Demonstrating value is the first step, communicating that value publicly is just as important.Attempt to identify areas in which measurable improvements can be realized, in some instances these areas have been low-hanging fruit. What is often required, however, is participation from management across organizational/geographical boundaries, thinking outside of the box, breakdown the silo thinking with the abandonment of territorial issues. They must be combined with frequent measuring and demonstrating value of IT to the C level and other functional leaders.
The advice to improve CIO tenure longevity: Make sure your operations work as flawlessly as possible first and build good relationships. Then you can get strategic for driving the long term digital transformation.
1) Earn the business: Be the business. Become the business.
2) Build strong, value-creating relationships (partnerships) with C-suite team, key customers and business partners.
3) Build a strong team, with a strong bench.
4) Make IT more shared, integrated, flexible, secure, adaptable and speed up.
5) Learn from trusted sources, and continuous learning
6) Of course, keep the lights on or nothing else matters.
With more and more organizations are on the inflection point of digital transformation; with the growing importance of data and technology that IT has the opportunity to not only be responsive, but ultimately be strategic leaders capable of helping lines of business thrive by proactively driving digital transformation.
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
Due to the accelerating speed of business change and “disruptive” nature of digital technology, IT organizations just have to continually reinvent itself to adapt to the changes, and IT leaders also have to re-imagine their leadership influence and effectiveness. Is your IT organization as responsive as it needs to be for organization growing as a Digital Master? And how can CIOs provide digital leadership in face of such digital disruption, to improve CIO tenure longevity and systematically driving the radical digitalization of their organizations and beyond?The main issue is the dynamic between running the IT utility and building a strategic IT. In most organizations no matter how good a CIO is focusing on and influencing business innovation, if the IT operations does not run flawlessly, their reputation, influence and longevity within the organization will be impacted. Businesses also have to empower their CIOs to co-create strategy and encourage IT to become an innovation engine to gain business competency. Until organizations mentally and culturally separate the CIO role from IT operations, CIOs will be always undone by operational failures (in their control or not). To put simply, building a strategic IT is not just CIO's job, but the collaborative effort of the whole senior executive team.
IT plays forerunning role in digital transformation. Digital IT leaders, meaning companies that lead in digital transformation, are much more likely to have a senior executive team who understands digital opportunities and threats and who builds that into his/her strategy & communication. Digital IT is running in much faster speed. Laggard companies often have a CXO team or board of directors who are comfortable doing things the old way and view IT as purely a support organization. It's very tough for CIO to drive transformation if that is the case. And IT still runs in industrial speed in those organizations.
People – Back to the three fundamental elements in business: People, Process and Technology. As IT leaders, you can ask two simple questions of every IT team member within your organization: What business value are you helping to create? Which business team members determine the priority of your work? If you don’t receive straight forward, consistent responses, you might have a problem with alignment, and accountability – most likely across IT and Business.
Process - Ask your team what you’re working on? When will business users be able to use it? What will you work on next? Same drill as before, if you don’t get clear and consistent replies – you have to work with the Business and IT areas within the area of concern. No matter whether this area’s Agile, Waterfall,. . ., the expectation is that all active and planned work is visible, including key schedule expectations, and project priority.
Technology – For the area of Responsiveness and Technology, the most important questions CIOs can ask their business partners are: Are there any tools your competitors use that you need to look at? Are your tools simple to use? These questions help show a willingness to engage people outside of IT on how best to solve a problem, or achieve an opportunity.
Don't forget about 'measurement.' Make it easy and enjoyable to monitor progress and outcome of initiatives. Demonstrating value is the first step, communicating that value publicly is just as important.Attempt to identify areas in which measurable improvements can be realized, in some instances these areas have been low-hanging fruit. What is often required, however, is participation from management across organizational/geographical boundaries, thinking outside of the box, breakdown the silo thinking with the abandonment of territorial issues. They must be combined with frequent measuring and demonstrating value of IT to the C level and other functional leaders.
The advice to improve CIO tenure longevity: Make sure your operations work as flawlessly as possible first and build good relationships. Then you can get strategic for driving the long term digital transformation.1) Earn the business: Be the business. Become the business.
2) Build strong, value-creating relationships (partnerships) with C-suite team, key customers and business partners.
3) Build a strong team, with a strong bench.
4) Make IT more shared, integrated, flexible, secure, adaptable and speed up.
5) Learn from trusted sources, and continuous learning
6) Of course, keep the lights on or nothing else matters.
With more and more organizations are on the inflection point of digital transformation; with the growing importance of data and technology that IT has the opportunity to not only be responsive, but ultimately be strategic leaders capable of helping lines of business thrive by proactively driving digital transformation.
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
Is Critical Thinking Domain Specific?
Critical thinking is more critical than ever, because the business and world becomes over-complex, uncertain and ambiguous.
Critical thinking is one of the most important skills to learn for career and life. There is evidence that organizations and managers/leaders who utilize critical thinking with an evidence based approach to decision making do better than those that don't. The good thing for those that do is that they are in the minority, giving them a competitive advantage. Still, there are many puzzles about critical thinking, is critical thinking domain specific, or subject independent? Does one always need background knowledge about a given context to refer to? Is critical thinking in management different from thinking critically in psychology? Does domain-general critical thinking mean anything more specific than asking "who?", "what?", "when?", "where?" and "why?" in new contexts?
Critical thinking, is a state of applied intelligence; and therefore it can be transferred to other domains, usually speaking, it is non-contextual specific. Psychology itself would be very difficult to apply and pursue if critical thinking was not a variable in the equation of its realization. Analysis of any kind would be unconscionable without critical thinking being applied in some degree, either in evaluation or dissection or in an explanation of a diagnosis. You will have hard time trying to envision a psychologist without using any critical thinking skills, as a determination of various diagnoses must include some form of critical thinking in their discovery. It is even not a necessary condition to have an awareness that ‘Critical Thinking’ is occurring at any given time; as critical thinking, being a property of the mind and its existence is no more conscionable as one’s heartbeat in most cases…you do not focus on your heartbeat while you are talking or explaining yourself and thus bring up your mental logic maps or memorized direction's to gain answers, and it is likewise with critical thinking. So most people apply critical thinking abilities without even knowing they are doing so. But none of this will give you skill in evaluating the plausibility of a premise or whether all the relevant considerations about an issue are on the table. For this you need background knowledge on the subject matter under discussion. And often this background knowledge spills over into knowledge of the intellectual history of the debate regarding the topic at issue, which can include debate over the meaning of important concepts, methodological standards, pragmatic and institutional context, and so on. The standard view in the informal logic/critical thinking academic community is that it's both. There's a domain-independent component to critical thinking and there's a domain-dependent component. So when biologists get together and debate the merits of "group selection" in evolutionary theory, if they're thinking critically then they're applying both the domain-independent elements of critical thinking and the domain-dependent elements specific to this issue. Some level of critique is needed in psychology because it deals with inexact concepts. It is mostly studied as an applied science, striving towards truths about behavior. The mind is operated involuntarily, in theory, because it is part of the body. However, from a biological point of view, one could consider the effort of critical thinking as training your mind to seek reason, or to reframe its approach to a conundrum in a certain way, similar to a reflex. After all, all thought is, technically, a nervous response to the world around us. Skills of examining inference provide the skills for analyzing, evaluating, and producing coherent argumentation. Thus, the core skills will include analysis of argumentation (including both explicit and implicit reasoning),
Standard education courses in formal and informal logic, probability and statistics, formal and informal fallacies, etc. are generally focused on domain-independent components. Evaluation of argumentation (including looking at/for weaknesses and strengths in reasoning, looking at analogies, raising issues of definition, and using criteria of credibility when considering evidence-claims), and the production of argumentation (developing skills in developing coherent and clear reasoning). These core skills can be applied to domain-specific material, such that they make better students of history, geography, biology, literature, sociology, and so on.
The critical thinking domain and the subject domain are not mutually exclusive. The subject domain gives you something to think about and knowledge to understand; and the critical thinking domain provides useful methodology. Knowing by listening to or looking at; understanding through asking the right questions, and responding with what needs to be said or done. The processes include 1) The ability to organize knowledge into understanding. 2) The right knowledge with understanding is wisdom. 3). learning, sharing and teaching. Also is it possible to break down analysis and evaluation further? For example, analogies may require knowledge (at the very least) about the subject of the analogies, in order to apply them. If so, could that really be considered as purely domain general before they are applied? Context, in which any analysis is made, dictates almost everything, philosophically speaking. Context of the individual, the social dynamic, the context of checking for specific errors related to a subject, be it referencing style, accepted convention for the structure of a study, the personal and professional characteristics of an audience.
Critical thinking is more critical than ever, because the business and world becomes over-complex, uncertain and ambiguous. Critical thinking as the core skill are concerned ultimately with the status of claims (evidence, recommendations, predictions, principles, guesses), especially when inferences are drawn from them. It could be as nature as taking a breath; or as complex as a jigsaw puzzle with thousands of pieces, you have to apply both subject domain and thinking domain fluently in order to master it for problem solving.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Critical thinking is one of the most important skills to learn for career and life. There is evidence that organizations and managers/leaders who utilize critical thinking with an evidence based approach to decision making do better than those that don't. The good thing for those that do is that they are in the minority, giving them a competitive advantage. Still, there are many puzzles about critical thinking, is critical thinking domain specific, or subject independent? Does one always need background knowledge about a given context to refer to? Is critical thinking in management different from thinking critically in psychology? Does domain-general critical thinking mean anything more specific than asking "who?", "what?", "when?", "where?" and "why?" in new contexts?
Critical thinking, is a state of applied intelligence; and therefore it can be transferred to other domains, usually speaking, it is non-contextual specific. Psychology itself would be very difficult to apply and pursue if critical thinking was not a variable in the equation of its realization. Analysis of any kind would be unconscionable without critical thinking being applied in some degree, either in evaluation or dissection or in an explanation of a diagnosis. You will have hard time trying to envision a psychologist without using any critical thinking skills, as a determination of various diagnoses must include some form of critical thinking in their discovery. It is even not a necessary condition to have an awareness that ‘Critical Thinking’ is occurring at any given time; as critical thinking, being a property of the mind and its existence is no more conscionable as one’s heartbeat in most cases…you do not focus on your heartbeat while you are talking or explaining yourself and thus bring up your mental logic maps or memorized direction's to gain answers, and it is likewise with critical thinking. So most people apply critical thinking abilities without even knowing they are doing so. But none of this will give you skill in evaluating the plausibility of a premise or whether all the relevant considerations about an issue are on the table. For this you need background knowledge on the subject matter under discussion. And often this background knowledge spills over into knowledge of the intellectual history of the debate regarding the topic at issue, which can include debate over the meaning of important concepts, methodological standards, pragmatic and institutional context, and so on. The standard view in the informal logic/critical thinking academic community is that it's both. There's a domain-independent component to critical thinking and there's a domain-dependent component. So when biologists get together and debate the merits of "group selection" in evolutionary theory, if they're thinking critically then they're applying both the domain-independent elements of critical thinking and the domain-dependent elements specific to this issue. Some level of critique is needed in psychology because it deals with inexact concepts. It is mostly studied as an applied science, striving towards truths about behavior. The mind is operated involuntarily, in theory, because it is part of the body. However, from a biological point of view, one could consider the effort of critical thinking as training your mind to seek reason, or to reframe its approach to a conundrum in a certain way, similar to a reflex. After all, all thought is, technically, a nervous response to the world around us. Skills of examining inference provide the skills for analyzing, evaluating, and producing coherent argumentation. Thus, the core skills will include analysis of argumentation (including both explicit and implicit reasoning),
Standard education courses in formal and informal logic, probability and statistics, formal and informal fallacies, etc. are generally focused on domain-independent components. Evaluation of argumentation (including looking at/for weaknesses and strengths in reasoning, looking at analogies, raising issues of definition, and using criteria of credibility when considering evidence-claims), and the production of argumentation (developing skills in developing coherent and clear reasoning). These core skills can be applied to domain-specific material, such that they make better students of history, geography, biology, literature, sociology, and so on.
The critical thinking domain and the subject domain are not mutually exclusive. The subject domain gives you something to think about and knowledge to understand; and the critical thinking domain provides useful methodology. Knowing by listening to or looking at; understanding through asking the right questions, and responding with what needs to be said or done. The processes include 1) The ability to organize knowledge into understanding. 2) The right knowledge with understanding is wisdom. 3). learning, sharing and teaching. Also is it possible to break down analysis and evaluation further? For example, analogies may require knowledge (at the very least) about the subject of the analogies, in order to apply them. If so, could that really be considered as purely domain general before they are applied? Context, in which any analysis is made, dictates almost everything, philosophically speaking. Context of the individual, the social dynamic, the context of checking for specific errors related to a subject, be it referencing style, accepted convention for the structure of a study, the personal and professional characteristics of an audience.
Critical thinking is more critical than ever, because the business and world becomes over-complex, uncertain and ambiguous. Critical thinking as the core skill are concerned ultimately with the status of claims (evidence, recommendations, predictions, principles, guesses), especially when inferences are drawn from them. It could be as nature as taking a breath; or as complex as a jigsaw puzzle with thousands of pieces, you have to apply both subject domain and thinking domain fluently in order to master it for problem solving.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
February 24, 2015
Digital Master Tuning XXXXVI: How to Build A Digital HR
People are the most critical thing that differentiates one organization from another.
The main function of HR does not change, to manage the most invaluable asset in their organization -People. HR mandate has been and still seems to be to staff the company's positions with the best available talent in the best possible conditions of costs and delays, and to make sure it manages attrition at a rate that is consistent with the company's HR fundamentals. Although many HRs have a very good understanding of technology and how it can impact their operations, most of them are at their tipping point for radical digital transformation. What’s the focal point and which challenge they have to overcome for transforming their organizations as a Digital Master?
The strong digital leadership is a catalyzer for digital transformation. Even if we assume that HR could definitely transform itself if its mastery of technology and how it affects both individual ways of working and organization was deeper, it would have to have an executive mandate to do that. And this is the mandate that should challenge and enrich in the coming years as the impact of technology on the nature and the volume of employment unfolds. Technology gives HR professionals the possibility to go back and work on issues such as human capital (the ownership of a company), executive talent impact ratios, leadership vs communityship …
The HR folks need to live in the real business world with serious analytical abilities that support decision making. The problem is that many HR folks are still living in the industrial age with silo mindset, and in their comfort zone, not even realizing that they are no match for their management colleagues who all come to meetings with state of the art systems supporting their decisions. But it's not just HR. Technology adoption by varying functions in organizations across all sectors is still not speedy enough to adapt to the changes. Digital HR shall strive to have clear understanding of what the organization needs in terms of people outcomes; both in terms of filling positions (recruiting/talent acquisition) and in terms of employee results (talent management). Once you understand those things beyond just surface, you can go "mine" for the data, to analyze the talent pipeline or predict the talent trend, and measure it in a meaningful way to the business. For example, the employee engagement and how to unleash talent potential is where HR could really collect and apply data for gaining insight and even prescribe the certain level of talent solution.
Technology is only a tool, not a goal in itself: HR leaders need to be clear on why you need digial technology (social, analytics, etc) and, more than anything else, what for? if this is to better know the employees, their talents, their gaps that need to be overcome, their career aspirations..., great; if not, it is just another overload of data that will be completely useless, because you always need human intelligence to de-crypt and analyze your data in order to make it a real management tool. Graphs, charts or any other general analysis only will not make HR a strategic partner, unless a transformation of data into information and then its interpretation in a specific context (the business insight) is being done. Still, if you have this sexy new technology and you don't know how to analyze the data to understand what is causing the variations in the data, then you just have stacks of graphs and charts that won't tell a cohesive story. So HR people must understand the businesses you support to the depth of what product/service is provided, to what customer, and how that product/service is used or benefits that customer. When you get to the level to be able to talk about these business imperatives in a knowledgeable and comfortable level, then you will know exactly what data/technology you will need to have to support and measure the business results.
The customized tool and tailored system helps shape digital HR. One of the major issues is your willingness to let the design and application of the technology drive what you use it for. So HR must have the clear vision, the thorough understanding of the data/metrics to collect, and the willingness to work closely with IT in their attempt to find the right software/systems - one that drives collaboration, not isolation. It will improve efficiency, effectiveness and even agility by creating a conversation-driven, employee-owned performance and talent management system.
People are still the most invaluable asset of business, which need to be managed effectively; and the second valuable asset of business -Data needs to be well managed as well in order to unleash talent potential and improve business productivity. Hence, HR has to work closely with IT and other departments for upgrading the tailored technology system and solutions, laser focus on the ultimate business goals, treat their talent people not just as a cost or resource; but as asset and capital to invest in, in order to run a digital HR, a smart HR and a highly mature HR. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The main function of HR does not change, to manage the most invaluable asset in their organization -People. HR mandate has been and still seems to be to staff the company's positions with the best available talent in the best possible conditions of costs and delays, and to make sure it manages attrition at a rate that is consistent with the company's HR fundamentals. Although many HRs have a very good understanding of technology and how it can impact their operations, most of them are at their tipping point for radical digital transformation. What’s the focal point and which challenge they have to overcome for transforming their organizations as a Digital Master?The strong digital leadership is a catalyzer for digital transformation. Even if we assume that HR could definitely transform itself if its mastery of technology and how it affects both individual ways of working and organization was deeper, it would have to have an executive mandate to do that. And this is the mandate that should challenge and enrich in the coming years as the impact of technology on the nature and the volume of employment unfolds. Technology gives HR professionals the possibility to go back and work on issues such as human capital (the ownership of a company), executive talent impact ratios, leadership vs communityship …
The HR folks need to live in the real business world with serious analytical abilities that support decision making. The problem is that many HR folks are still living in the industrial age with silo mindset, and in their comfort zone, not even realizing that they are no match for their management colleagues who all come to meetings with state of the art systems supporting their decisions. But it's not just HR. Technology adoption by varying functions in organizations across all sectors is still not speedy enough to adapt to the changes. Digital HR shall strive to have clear understanding of what the organization needs in terms of people outcomes; both in terms of filling positions (recruiting/talent acquisition) and in terms of employee results (talent management). Once you understand those things beyond just surface, you can go "mine" for the data, to analyze the talent pipeline or predict the talent trend, and measure it in a meaningful way to the business. For example, the employee engagement and how to unleash talent potential is where HR could really collect and apply data for gaining insight and even prescribe the certain level of talent solution.
Technology is only a tool, not a goal in itself: HR leaders need to be clear on why you need digial technology (social, analytics, etc) and, more than anything else, what for? if this is to better know the employees, their talents, their gaps that need to be overcome, their career aspirations..., great; if not, it is just another overload of data that will be completely useless, because you always need human intelligence to de-crypt and analyze your data in order to make it a real management tool. Graphs, charts or any other general analysis only will not make HR a strategic partner, unless a transformation of data into information and then its interpretation in a specific context (the business insight) is being done. Still, if you have this sexy new technology and you don't know how to analyze the data to understand what is causing the variations in the data, then you just have stacks of graphs and charts that won't tell a cohesive story. So HR people must understand the businesses you support to the depth of what product/service is provided, to what customer, and how that product/service is used or benefits that customer. When you get to the level to be able to talk about these business imperatives in a knowledgeable and comfortable level, then you will know exactly what data/technology you will need to have to support and measure the business results.
The customized tool and tailored system helps shape digital HR. One of the major issues is your willingness to let the design and application of the technology drive what you use it for. So HR must have the clear vision, the thorough understanding of the data/metrics to collect, and the willingness to work closely with IT in their attempt to find the right software/systems - one that drives collaboration, not isolation. It will improve efficiency, effectiveness and even agility by creating a conversation-driven, employee-owned performance and talent management system. People are still the most invaluable asset of business, which need to be managed effectively; and the second valuable asset of business -Data needs to be well managed as well in order to unleash talent potential and improve business productivity. Hence, HR has to work closely with IT and other departments for upgrading the tailored technology system and solutions, laser focus on the ultimate business goals, treat their talent people not just as a cost or resource; but as asset and capital to invest in, in order to run a digital HR, a smart HR and a highly mature HR. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The Many Shades of Creativity
Creativity is a self-conscious mind activity to think differently or create the novel idea.
Be it an art, a science, a talk, a humor, a different thought.... creativity can be applied in all the field ..if one can develop that skill of thinking differently. There are many shades of creativity.
Creativity is everything that one has seen, felt, touched, dreamed. All our experiences are completely reconfigured in a way that mixes up all of those things. So what you're creating is a new piece of thought that feels familiar but comes at us in a different unusual way. We're empathetic to the new piece because we think we know it, but we don't because what has been added is a twist. A re-connection of images of thoughts and ideas that spark new thoughts both to ourselves and others. And because we are challenged to put it all together, we appreciate the journey. The greater the journey, the greater the success.
Creativity is about connecting the dots. In life we come across various experiences (exposure to various situations) as colorful dots, the more dots you have, the better chance your mind can connect them freely. How cleverly you connect your dots by leveraging your experiences and finding solution to the problems is creativity. It could be an out of the box thinking. How well you connect the dots could be a wildest sense. But if you train your mind, everyone could practice.
To create something is to capture it. The photographer is not alone in catching something which changes, grows, it is affected by time - but not in the photograph. Picasso caught the marvelous actions of bulls in pen and ink drawings: but they are not alive. The liveliness of the drawings is almost a con. The poet, capturing a thought, a phrase, finishes it by conveying the deep meaning, and then printing it; but the meaning can have multi-dimensional manifestations. There is nothing more excited than to capture such “aha” moment for getting the fresh ideas to fulfill the creative souls, but such moment takes both subconscious and conscious mind crafting.
Without consciousness, there is no creativity. self-conscious would have been a better concept than just 'conscious.' When in the grip of the creative urge, there is no thought of self, no ego, or logic or reason. Consciousness is awareness of the subject you are talking about, your knowledge in the field; Creativity is a thinking process for connecting dots. It could be an out of the box thinking. Consciousness is subjective. Creativity doesn't come automatically. Sometimes you need to think hard. Sometime you just need to let your mind flow, to capture such “aha” moment to get the solution immediately. Creativity is a talent.
Creativity is a mindset: Although artists "adhere to creativity" (indulging in creative acts, and prioritizing creativity as a distinct concept within their lives) in greater degrees than "the average population" does, it is also intrinsic to all of humanity. Although the society, or our social structures having benefited from the byproducts of creativity, it provides little more than a token acknowledgment of the importance of creativity within every person's life and the collective human progress. More often, the creativity gets penalized and the mediocrity gets rewarded.
Creativity clearly comes from "opening" of the mind and focus of one's conscious. It appears that the evolution of the human will have to come from the ease of ignoring distractions, or to become more focused. Creativity generally comes from people who are passionate about their openness and sensitivity; experience slights and anxieties not usually felt by the rest of the population, yet at the same time have the great joy in bringing a new idea, concept to life. These are people who are more focused on “what’s next” than “look what I did!” It’s all in the attitude and mind, and it just needs to be nurtured properly. It comes from possibility thinking and solution orientation. For many people, it requires a seamless paradigm shift in thinking from "problem" stickiness & root-cause analysis towards discovering possibilities.
The creativity-innovation scenario: There are necessary requirements and processes of cultivating creativity (the innate capability to create novel ideas), and implementation of innovation (how to transform novel ideas to achieve its business value): 1). Know yourself thoroughly. (try to find a few beliefs and habits which you feel requires creativity ) 2). Find the possible alternatives to be adopted. 3). Study the choices and select the best possible implementable alternative. 4). Formulate the strategy to implement, considering your present strengths and weaknesses. 5). Implement with full belief and faith in yourself. This also requires the strategy of doing, check and doing.
Creativity is a symbol of life and all will be blessed with the skill of developing a creative mind, but most of people ignore that; once they get on to creativity then it is an addiction and will not be able get out of that. The creativity naturally presents in a few people, for some it needs to be nurtured more! Just release yourself, appreciate your surroundings with an awe....your creativity will come out....simple but tough. Here is a creative quote from an article to sums up - "People who thrive as creative problem-solvers probably have developed a series of habits that let their brains' neighborhoods talk more freely to each other."
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Do you Understand the Big Data Pipeline?
Big Data is neither equal to the fancy new technologies nor a huge database, it is a full step-by-step process pipeline.
Big Data as a big phenomenon causes big attention, however, people are getting confused about the difference between tools and the knowledge in what everyone is calling now Big Data. Data analysis, and Big Data is not Hadoop or SQL or Python or R. These are just tools that help you analyze data. Getting Big Data right is about more than the size of your database, or the fancy tools, it is the full step-by-step process PIPELINE from collecting and storing data to analyzing and visualizing data to extract business insight & foresight from it.
Big data is not just a Big database; it is multiple databases that have to work together and have to be connected; those databases have been created by different people, even different companies with different formats. All of these have to work together. The problem caused by big data is "how can we get so huge data." These produce because, for example, fast growing "user table," but you cannot delete data on behalf of user. Hence it comes "storage" for fast querying and updating. Then the tech community introduces Hadoop technology, which actually are distributed database server architecture for easily extend the existing data volume. Then you need to understand the data, run machine learning algorithms or statistic tools, then visualize the data and gain an insight if you did it right and you are lucky.
Put your Big Data"fit-for-purpose." Data analysis is not Hadoop, it is much more than the simple technical tools. Data Analysis is a process that needs connecting to databases, or a data server provider or creating the database using a crawler. Then analyzes and visualizes the data. Data storage is only a part of the whole Big Data business logic. It seems like too many people think if you aren't using Hadoop, you are not doing Big Data; many people are thinking or inquiring if Big Data = Hadoop and vice versa. That's why you have to put emphasis on "fit-for-purpose." Big data is about "data collection" (crawling for example) + "data storage" +data analysis & visualization. As for analysis part, RDBMS is a data warehouse after ETL over distributed data sources, Data analysis as final stage is about data dimensional analysis not about amount analysis. selecting enough samples is to ease random errors so that the result is stable.
There are pros and cons with various approaches to Big Data. Big Data is "bigger than the size of your database." Solving a problem and optimizing the algorithms often do need to collect huge amount of data. The more data you collect, the better the results it get. However, the reality does not allow you to have all the data you want, so there'll be time that you need to be selective in choosing the best proxy available. Also, you should realize there are pros and cons with various approaches to Big Data, but users rather have it 80% right than wait until there is a perfect prediction. The criteria to select different platforms and tools is to improve speed and scalability, although it is sometimes difficult to make real apples-to-apples comparison.
The five Vs (volume, volatility, variety, veracity, and value) of Big Data is its very characteristics. Still, it is means to the end -to achieve business value, not the end itself. The goal to get Big Data right is to ensure the data as the lifeblood of modern business can nurture the whole body of business and keep it fit, energetic and resilient in order to adapt to the accelerating speed of digital dynamic.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Big Data as a big phenomenon causes big attention, however, people are getting confused about the difference between tools and the knowledge in what everyone is calling now Big Data. Data analysis, and Big Data is not Hadoop or SQL or Python or R. These are just tools that help you analyze data. Getting Big Data right is about more than the size of your database, or the fancy tools, it is the full step-by-step process PIPELINE from collecting and storing data to analyzing and visualizing data to extract business insight & foresight from it.
Big data is not just a Big database; it is multiple databases that have to work together and have to be connected; those databases have been created by different people, even different companies with different formats. All of these have to work together. The problem caused by big data is "how can we get so huge data." These produce because, for example, fast growing "user table," but you cannot delete data on behalf of user. Hence it comes "storage" for fast querying and updating. Then the tech community introduces Hadoop technology, which actually are distributed database server architecture for easily extend the existing data volume. Then you need to understand the data, run machine learning algorithms or statistic tools, then visualize the data and gain an insight if you did it right and you are lucky.
Put your Big Data"fit-for-purpose." Data analysis is not Hadoop, it is much more than the simple technical tools. Data Analysis is a process that needs connecting to databases, or a data server provider or creating the database using a crawler. Then analyzes and visualizes the data. Data storage is only a part of the whole Big Data business logic. It seems like too many people think if you aren't using Hadoop, you are not doing Big Data; many people are thinking or inquiring if Big Data = Hadoop and vice versa. That's why you have to put emphasis on "fit-for-purpose." Big data is about "data collection" (crawling for example) + "data storage" +data analysis & visualization. As for analysis part, RDBMS is a data warehouse after ETL over distributed data sources, Data analysis as final stage is about data dimensional analysis not about amount analysis. selecting enough samples is to ease random errors so that the result is stable.
There are pros and cons with various approaches to Big Data. Big Data is "bigger than the size of your database." Solving a problem and optimizing the algorithms often do need to collect huge amount of data. The more data you collect, the better the results it get. However, the reality does not allow you to have all the data you want, so there'll be time that you need to be selective in choosing the best proxy available. Also, you should realize there are pros and cons with various approaches to Big Data, but users rather have it 80% right than wait until there is a perfect prediction. The criteria to select different platforms and tools is to improve speed and scalability, although it is sometimes difficult to make real apples-to-apples comparison.
The five Vs (volume, volatility, variety, veracity, and value) of Big Data is its very characteristics. Still, it is means to the end -to achieve business value, not the end itself. The goal to get Big Data right is to ensure the data as the lifeblood of modern business can nurture the whole body of business and keep it fit, energetic and resilient in order to adapt to the accelerating speed of digital dynamic.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
