Sorry, you must be a member of this group to do that.
Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1457
February 5, 2015
An Adaptive Mind
An adaptive mind can converge conscious thinking and unconscious or inner realm; or think fast and think slow accordingly.
Adaptability is to be understood as the ability of a system to adapt itself efficiently and fast to changed circumstances. An adaptive mind is therefore an open mind that is able to adjust its thinking processes according to changes in its environment; or a learning mind to absorb all necessary knowledge and abstract it into insight and wisdom.
An adaptive mind has better learning capability: Each person has a different level of knowledge (the consciousness about a problem) and react to environmental changes, with behaviors that are strictly linked with the information they have and with the way other people share and collaborate with them.... but knowledge (structure) and reactions (behaviors) change, evolve applying them in time and space. Knowledge is a collection of facts; raw data. What one does with the raw data requires wisdom. Wisdom is an umbrella term, as it is the amalgamation of thought, analysis, planning, prediction of consequences, and so on. Then knowledge is the result of lessons we learned by exploitation of our wisdom! There is possible to see what enables us to be self-adaptive organisms is an information-driven process feeding and sustaining it.
An adaptive mind has better collaborative attitude & behavior: Self-adaptation is faster if made with the full involvement of people in organizational change; Thanks to rapid evolution in technology and neuroscience, we are discovering many things about our brains, our behaviors, our attitudes and skills. This “incremental consciousness” about our own potentials is changing the way we see ourselves, our roles into a community: a team or a company. Organization are made by people and people are the key element in self-adaptive organisms-today’s digital organization. There are heuristics in defining these requirements for the integrated system, as well as the system elements: the human, software, firmware, hardware (automated, semi-automated, and/or manual functions) and the environment; further addressing the system life cycle. Understanding the people and the organization through a common lens then makes it possible to turn organizational “theories” into tangible management processes that use “relations between people” as the loom on which to create management structures and processes that support self-adaptive problem-solving.
An adaptive mind can converge conscious thinking and unconscious or inner realm; or think fast and think slow accordingly. How we behave as individuals in regard to our inner world is just as important and may even be more important than how we behave in regard to our outer world. Jung's psychological theory is based upon the primary assumption that the human mind has both a conscious or outer realm and an unconscious or inner realm. Because we tend to live and function in our conscious world, it is here that we try to resolve our individual and societal problems using the same behaviour patterns over and over until they no longer fit the situation. Because of this, Jung believes that the resolution to conscious problems lies in the unconscious realm and as long as humans deny the contents of the unconscious they are also denying a fundamental part of themselves and society. Hence, an adaptive mind can leverage both thinking realm in more profound and flexible way in order to making effective decision and fair judgement.
An adaptive thinking can also mean about such a synthetic mode, well mixing systems thinking, holistic thinking, abstract thinking, temporal thinking, integrative thinking, quantitative and qualitative thinking, induction and deduction...with the very purpose to “perfect the wheel,” to adapt to the change, and to move the world forward.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Adaptability is to be understood as the ability of a system to adapt itself efficiently and fast to changed circumstances. An adaptive mind is therefore an open mind that is able to adjust its thinking processes according to changes in its environment; or a learning mind to absorb all necessary knowledge and abstract it into insight and wisdom. An adaptive mind has better learning capability: Each person has a different level of knowledge (the consciousness about a problem) and react to environmental changes, with behaviors that are strictly linked with the information they have and with the way other people share and collaborate with them.... but knowledge (structure) and reactions (behaviors) change, evolve applying them in time and space. Knowledge is a collection of facts; raw data. What one does with the raw data requires wisdom. Wisdom is an umbrella term, as it is the amalgamation of thought, analysis, planning, prediction of consequences, and so on. Then knowledge is the result of lessons we learned by exploitation of our wisdom! There is possible to see what enables us to be self-adaptive organisms is an information-driven process feeding and sustaining it.
An adaptive mind has better collaborative attitude & behavior: Self-adaptation is faster if made with the full involvement of people in organizational change; Thanks to rapid evolution in technology and neuroscience, we are discovering many things about our brains, our behaviors, our attitudes and skills. This “incremental consciousness” about our own potentials is changing the way we see ourselves, our roles into a community: a team or a company. Organization are made by people and people are the key element in self-adaptive organisms-today’s digital organization. There are heuristics in defining these requirements for the integrated system, as well as the system elements: the human, software, firmware, hardware (automated, semi-automated, and/or manual functions) and the environment; further addressing the system life cycle. Understanding the people and the organization through a common lens then makes it possible to turn organizational “theories” into tangible management processes that use “relations between people” as the loom on which to create management structures and processes that support self-adaptive problem-solving.
An adaptive mind can converge conscious thinking and unconscious or inner realm; or think fast and think slow accordingly. How we behave as individuals in regard to our inner world is just as important and may even be more important than how we behave in regard to our outer world. Jung's psychological theory is based upon the primary assumption that the human mind has both a conscious or outer realm and an unconscious or inner realm. Because we tend to live and function in our conscious world, it is here that we try to resolve our individual and societal problems using the same behaviour patterns over and over until they no longer fit the situation. Because of this, Jung believes that the resolution to conscious problems lies in the unconscious realm and as long as humans deny the contents of the unconscious they are also denying a fundamental part of themselves and society. Hence, an adaptive mind can leverage both thinking realm in more profound and flexible way in order to making effective decision and fair judgement.
An adaptive thinking can also mean about such a synthetic mode, well mixing systems thinking, holistic thinking, abstract thinking, temporal thinking, integrative thinking, quantitative and qualitative thinking, induction and deduction...with the very purpose to “perfect the wheel,” to adapt to the change, and to move the world forward.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
From UX Strategy Mode into UX Design Mode
The artifacts that bring strategy alive and allow it to be communicated effectively are an essential part of the UX designer skill-set.
User/Customer Strategy has become an important element of corporate digital strategy, and the idea that the strategy envisions becomes real through UX Design. However, what do you do to effectively transition from UX Strategy mode into UX Design mode? What are all the ways and means you use to bridge UX Strategy to UX Design? How do you transition into design mode? How do you kick start the design process? What role does your strategy play as you progress through design and implementation? How should you apply your strategy deliverable during design? What role do your UX Strategists play in UX Design? How do you take UX design into agile teams and implement it smoothly?
Strategies inform the tactics. Strategy is a plan or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim. UI design is tactic, an action intended to achieve a specific end. Strategies inform the tactics ... those actions intended to carry out the strategies. In reality, Agile teams will understand design, but may have trouble understanding the need or role of UX Strategy. It's necessary to bring a design strategy for any given project to life through storyboards, prototypes and stories of some sort, and this is where UX design plays in. So anyone in UX needs to be an advocate for making strategy a part of the design process and may need to fight for that role. The positive side is given the adaptive nature of agile teams once an argument can be made for its inclusion, teams can incorporate UX Strategy into the process pretty effectively.
The artifacts that bring strategy alive and allow it to be communicated effectively are an essential part of the UX designer skill-set. Pure strategy deliverable don’t often convey the potential reality. Sometimes the nature of final strategy deliverable differ depending on whether the work is pure strategy (which will be deliberated on before a decision to design and build is made) or instead strategy for design, which can go deeper into the conceptualization. On the strategical level, look at the overall business/operations, trying to understand culture, business, and both business and user needs and expectations. Business goals, visions and missions, features heavily in this. Look at where the reality is today and where they need or want to be, looking at the gap. The strategy, then, describes this gap and the journey needed to get there. Defining goals and KPIs is a vital part of this. On the tactical level, then, describes the solution that will help the client meet the vision or reach the goals. The result is a conceptual solution. It may consist of many different parts, over different channels - some may be organizational changes, for example, so not limited to digital solutions. Maybe there is a need for a new governance model, new ownership models, or there may be services needing a corresponding back-end organisation.
Either an individual designer or team needs to work on both simultaneously. That is, one needs to give time to both (switching between both seamlessly). Without strategy, a designer can start to lose the bigger picture. Without design, the grand plan never gets implemented or is done adequately. Even if a UX team is split between those who focus more on product strategy and those who focus more closely on design elements, they must work more collaboratively to make seamless design following the strategy, develop skills - either individually or within a team in visualizing the strategy and implement it.
So by definition, you're really never out of UI Strategy mode. Strategies and tactics run at different levels in your process with strategies running at a higher level of abstraction than tactics. Where designers and strategists often intersect will be in design standards; design evolutionary paths often related to expected availability of capabilities; managing risks and the means to reduce use errors. So a UI Strategist should be taking a long and informed view of what UI policies best serve or will best serve in the future the needs of the business or organization. The UI designers should be fully aware of those policies when initiating a design. A designer should be able to justify a design on the basis that the design furthers the policies as defined by the UI strategists. They need to work collaboratively to make strategy a living thing, and the design a true delight to their users and customers.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
User/Customer Strategy has become an important element of corporate digital strategy, and the idea that the strategy envisions becomes real through UX Design. However, what do you do to effectively transition from UX Strategy mode into UX Design mode? What are all the ways and means you use to bridge UX Strategy to UX Design? How do you transition into design mode? How do you kick start the design process? What role does your strategy play as you progress through design and implementation? How should you apply your strategy deliverable during design? What role do your UX Strategists play in UX Design? How do you take UX design into agile teams and implement it smoothly?
Strategies inform the tactics. Strategy is a plan or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim. UI design is tactic, an action intended to achieve a specific end. Strategies inform the tactics ... those actions intended to carry out the strategies. In reality, Agile teams will understand design, but may have trouble understanding the need or role of UX Strategy. It's necessary to bring a design strategy for any given project to life through storyboards, prototypes and stories of some sort, and this is where UX design plays in. So anyone in UX needs to be an advocate for making strategy a part of the design process and may need to fight for that role. The positive side is given the adaptive nature of agile teams once an argument can be made for its inclusion, teams can incorporate UX Strategy into the process pretty effectively.
The artifacts that bring strategy alive and allow it to be communicated effectively are an essential part of the UX designer skill-set. Pure strategy deliverable don’t often convey the potential reality. Sometimes the nature of final strategy deliverable differ depending on whether the work is pure strategy (which will be deliberated on before a decision to design and build is made) or instead strategy for design, which can go deeper into the conceptualization. On the strategical level, look at the overall business/operations, trying to understand culture, business, and both business and user needs and expectations. Business goals, visions and missions, features heavily in this. Look at where the reality is today and where they need or want to be, looking at the gap. The strategy, then, describes this gap and the journey needed to get there. Defining goals and KPIs is a vital part of this. On the tactical level, then, describes the solution that will help the client meet the vision or reach the goals. The result is a conceptual solution. It may consist of many different parts, over different channels - some may be organizational changes, for example, so not limited to digital solutions. Maybe there is a need for a new governance model, new ownership models, or there may be services needing a corresponding back-end organisation.
Either an individual designer or team needs to work on both simultaneously. That is, one needs to give time to both (switching between both seamlessly). Without strategy, a designer can start to lose the bigger picture. Without design, the grand plan never gets implemented or is done adequately. Even if a UX team is split between those who focus more on product strategy and those who focus more closely on design elements, they must work more collaboratively to make seamless design following the strategy, develop skills - either individually or within a team in visualizing the strategy and implement it.
So by definition, you're really never out of UI Strategy mode. Strategies and tactics run at different levels in your process with strategies running at a higher level of abstraction than tactics. Where designers and strategists often intersect will be in design standards; design evolutionary paths often related to expected availability of capabilities; managing risks and the means to reduce use errors. So a UI Strategist should be taking a long and informed view of what UI policies best serve or will best serve in the future the needs of the business or organization. The UI designers should be fully aware of those policies when initiating a design. A designer should be able to justify a design on the basis that the design furthers the policies as defined by the UI strategists. They need to work collaboratively to make strategy a living thing, and the design a true delight to their users and customers.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital Master Tuning XXXII: How Do you Define Organizational Fit
The organizational fit is the well balance of the fitting attitude and “misfit” thinking.
Organizations today are hyperconnected and over-complex, with well mixed physical workplace and virtual team setting; multi-cultural, multi-generational and multi-devicing workforce, what’s your team building principles? How do you define organizational fit, in order to build innovative and high-performing teams and transform the whole organization into a Digital Master?
The term 'fit' can be interpreted with a degree of variability. Where you want to look for 'fit' is in relation to the values you want to build or maintain within your team, and the kinds of behaviors that you would expect to see as a result of, or in alignment with, those values. 'Fit' doesn't mean that everyone needs to have the same thought process, the same personalities, the same preferences, or the same experiences. What is important is that everyone feels committed to the goals of the team, and are comfortable with the behavioral expectations associated with those goals. Fit is also an important predictor to retention, so finding someone with the right fit can be a significant cost saving over time if turnover has been a challenge for you.
Fit or Misfit is contextual: Are you planning to build a homogeneous or heterogeneous team; a complimentary team or a competitive team? Organizations need to be thoughtful about whether you are hiring people who are an obvious "fit," and passing on people who are less so (at least on the surface). Thought, skill and experience diversity are what make effective innovation and growth possible, and you are selling short when you hire for homogeneity. Organizational fit from conventional lenses makes relationships easy and perpetuates the status quo, so if companies are satisfied with where they are and going then they should pay attention to fit. If things need to change then they need to quit hiring clones. Fit and diversity are not mutually exclusive. Just because two different people have different backgrounds, different approaches, and different opinions does not mean they can't be a good fit. Organizational fit means "incluversity," not about cookie cutting or hiring clones.
The organizational fit is the well balance of the fitting attitude and “misfit” thinking. At ultimate level, organizational fit means to well balance the fit (good attitude and accepted behavior) and misfit (independent thinking and creativity). Organizational fit means more about value adding or behavioral norms. And people need to be intentional about how they enter the role, focusing on understanding and respecting the people, culture and history. The failure to do this is one of the biggest causes of derailment -- and creator of the perception of poor-fit. The fit is also not equal to be compliant only, the ‘group think’ is one of the most devastating to team performance and certainly to a team’s ability to innovate. Organizational fit, manifested in accepted and expected behavior, has a way of neutralizing differences. At today’s digital new normal, the culture fit means organizations need to proactively seek different ideas and engage in healthy debate and critical thinking with diverse points of view.
So the best an organization can do is to hire someone with the potential to fit with positive attitude, but be cautious of “too fit” on the surface, build complimentary team with cognitive difference and diversified skills & experience, and then support the process of "wiring" them to the role and company in order to shape high-performance digital workforce to competing for the future.
Digitalization is like a flywheel, and Digital Masters are the one riding above it. Surf more Information about Digital Master:
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Introduction URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTube
Digital Master Fun QuizFollow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Organizations today are hyperconnected and over-complex, with well mixed physical workplace and virtual team setting; multi-cultural, multi-generational and multi-devicing workforce, what’s your team building principles? How do you define organizational fit, in order to build innovative and high-performing teams and transform the whole organization into a Digital Master?
The term 'fit' can be interpreted with a degree of variability. Where you want to look for 'fit' is in relation to the values you want to build or maintain within your team, and the kinds of behaviors that you would expect to see as a result of, or in alignment with, those values. 'Fit' doesn't mean that everyone needs to have the same thought process, the same personalities, the same preferences, or the same experiences. What is important is that everyone feels committed to the goals of the team, and are comfortable with the behavioral expectations associated with those goals. Fit is also an important predictor to retention, so finding someone with the right fit can be a significant cost saving over time if turnover has been a challenge for you.
Fit or Misfit is contextual: Are you planning to build a homogeneous or heterogeneous team; a complimentary team or a competitive team? Organizations need to be thoughtful about whether you are hiring people who are an obvious "fit," and passing on people who are less so (at least on the surface). Thought, skill and experience diversity are what make effective innovation and growth possible, and you are selling short when you hire for homogeneity. Organizational fit from conventional lenses makes relationships easy and perpetuates the status quo, so if companies are satisfied with where they are and going then they should pay attention to fit. If things need to change then they need to quit hiring clones. Fit and diversity are not mutually exclusive. Just because two different people have different backgrounds, different approaches, and different opinions does not mean they can't be a good fit. Organizational fit means "incluversity," not about cookie cutting or hiring clones.
The organizational fit is the well balance of the fitting attitude and “misfit” thinking. At ultimate level, organizational fit means to well balance the fit (good attitude and accepted behavior) and misfit (independent thinking and creativity). Organizational fit means more about value adding or behavioral norms. And people need to be intentional about how they enter the role, focusing on understanding and respecting the people, culture and history. The failure to do this is one of the biggest causes of derailment -- and creator of the perception of poor-fit. The fit is also not equal to be compliant only, the ‘group think’ is one of the most devastating to team performance and certainly to a team’s ability to innovate. Organizational fit, manifested in accepted and expected behavior, has a way of neutralizing differences. At today’s digital new normal, the culture fit means organizations need to proactively seek different ideas and engage in healthy debate and critical thinking with diverse points of view.
So the best an organization can do is to hire someone with the potential to fit with positive attitude, but be cautious of “too fit” on the surface, build complimentary team with cognitive difference and diversified skills & experience, and then support the process of "wiring" them to the role and company in order to shape high-performance digital workforce to competing for the future.
Digitalization is like a flywheel, and Digital Masters are the one riding above it. Surf more Information about Digital Master:
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Introduction URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTube
Digital Master Fun QuizFollow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
February 4, 2015
Digital Maser Tuning XXXI: From Fragile to Anti-Fragility in Agile Journey
Agilists are phenomenally disciplined in focusing on value, prioritizing, executing, and collaborating.
Many organizations are having an Agile shift during their digital transformation journey; Agile means customer-centricity with three Is: Incremental Improvement; Iterative Communication and Interactive Collaboration. From doing Agile to being agile; from being fragile to anti-fragiity, it is a journey to grow into a Digital Master.
Agilists are phenomenally disciplined in focusing on value, prioritizing, executing, and collaborating. An agile culture is not the result of salable processes, but of scalable behavior. Altering how executives think and act it challenging. The most effective approach to organizational culture change is for the lead executive to have a personal philosophy shift. This changes the most important thing -- leadership mindset and behavior. It also flows into what they pay attention to and how they prioritize, lead their team, and deploy management processes. A few ways to approach this include finding a volunteer at the top of the organization and getting them interested in a central organizing metaphor and language like the responsibility process, grooming an agile expert for the top role, or allowing the organization to succumb to market forces and then pick up the pieces. Agile approaches that have similar values are:-Focus-Courage -Openness-Commitment-Respect
The hybrid approach is always going to be the one that is tailor-made for the project you're on. Many people engage in Fragile (doing Agile rather than being Agile) and sees a need for a hybrid approach to make up for teams who are missing certain parts of the development effort. A "hybrid" approach, is not just about adding in checklists, quality checks, etc. Agility is not just producing crap faster. You use the techniques necessary to bring business value and a lack of quality rarely brings value. it's wise to remember that this business is art rather than science. The hybrid approach is always going to be the one that is tailor-made for the project you're on. In cases where the life-expectancy of an app is measurable in decades, you simply must keep a set of long-range lenses on and take the extra time and steps necessary to plan it well even if it doesn't seem "agile." A hybrid approach isn't always necessary for quality but a well thought out and tailored one always is.
Shortage of skills causes problems, no matter what approach is used. And agile approaches are allowed to pick and mix practices from all sources, where they are appropriate practices in the context. In the case that the system is poorly structured, very complicated, confusing, and hard to maintain, the problem is that your teams don't have the skills (or possibly aren't allowed to apply them) to create a system that is well designed and easy to maintain. Technical challenge has built up, whether owing to shortage of skills or shortage of prioritization. Change happens, otherwise there would be no need for a team of agilists. If these agile practitioners can integrate change with appropriate refactoring, then you will get well-designed, simple to maintain systems. Documentation is another challenge. If your teams don't have the skills, then documentation means that it takes longer and more effort to produce a very complicated, confusing, and hard to maintain, but hopefully well-documented codebase. Even the more skilled agile practitioners out there are still learning. So the "right way" to do something is going to do continuous learning. People who "do" rather than "be" anything tend to end up as the worst case studies. Don't blame "Aglie," the problem is lack of skill. Ideally you need to be able to recognize, acquire, grow and retain good people. If your organization chooses not to do this, then they get what they've got.
It is critical to maintain the core values of Agile. You can't blame agile for bad architecture, poor craftsmanship, lack of valuing agile principles, lack of true agility across the organization, etc. Agile is too often misused and teams move too fast and they are faced with sacrificing reliable delivery, quality and/or technical excellence. With time boxing, the team is often chooses to sacrifice quality and/or technical excellence. It is critical to maintain the core values. Agility means using what works and adapting to make it continue to improve, even it that means removing things that no longer work. There are times you have to introduce something that might make Agile "purists" cringe, even if it is just to facilitate learning a concept. The whole notion of "agility" to be including the notion that you have to stay flexible and choose the right approach each time you approach a project. But sometimes that may mean doing something that seems less "Agile" from an academic perspective. If those cases exist, then not doing so in them would be less "Agile", in reality. And that's just what people do when they think they have the truth "cornered." If you don't have skills, or if you are not allowed to use them, it is not an Agile problem, it is an organizational problem, it is a management problem, it is in the end your problem. What Agile did is highlighted the problem for all to see, so the upper management, can rightly know it is their business decisions that got them here. After all, it is a business decision how you run your business, and issues outlined are all business problems which caused technical problems.
Agile is both a philosophy and methodology to run a digital organization; Digital organization as a whole is anti-fragile, but some parts maybe fragile, via applying tailored agility, the digital organization with anti-fragile characteristics can better survive and thrive in volatility and uncertainty, and it can well adapt to the business nature of complexity and interdependence, as well as lift business maturity significantly.
Digitalization is like a flywheel, and Digital Masters are the one riding above it. Surf more Information about Digital Master:
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Introduction URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTube
Digital Master Fun QuizFollow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Many organizations are having an Agile shift during their digital transformation journey; Agile means customer-centricity with three Is: Incremental Improvement; Iterative Communication and Interactive Collaboration. From doing Agile to being agile; from being fragile to anti-fragiity, it is a journey to grow into a Digital Master.
Agilists are phenomenally disciplined in focusing on value, prioritizing, executing, and collaborating. An agile culture is not the result of salable processes, but of scalable behavior. Altering how executives think and act it challenging. The most effective approach to organizational culture change is for the lead executive to have a personal philosophy shift. This changes the most important thing -- leadership mindset and behavior. It also flows into what they pay attention to and how they prioritize, lead their team, and deploy management processes. A few ways to approach this include finding a volunteer at the top of the organization and getting them interested in a central organizing metaphor and language like the responsibility process, grooming an agile expert for the top role, or allowing the organization to succumb to market forces and then pick up the pieces. Agile approaches that have similar values are:-Focus-Courage -Openness-Commitment-Respect
The hybrid approach is always going to be the one that is tailor-made for the project you're on. Many people engage in Fragile (doing Agile rather than being Agile) and sees a need for a hybrid approach to make up for teams who are missing certain parts of the development effort. A "hybrid" approach, is not just about adding in checklists, quality checks, etc. Agility is not just producing crap faster. You use the techniques necessary to bring business value and a lack of quality rarely brings value. it's wise to remember that this business is art rather than science. The hybrid approach is always going to be the one that is tailor-made for the project you're on. In cases where the life-expectancy of an app is measurable in decades, you simply must keep a set of long-range lenses on and take the extra time and steps necessary to plan it well even if it doesn't seem "agile." A hybrid approach isn't always necessary for quality but a well thought out and tailored one always is.
Shortage of skills causes problems, no matter what approach is used. And agile approaches are allowed to pick and mix practices from all sources, where they are appropriate practices in the context. In the case that the system is poorly structured, very complicated, confusing, and hard to maintain, the problem is that your teams don't have the skills (or possibly aren't allowed to apply them) to create a system that is well designed and easy to maintain. Technical challenge has built up, whether owing to shortage of skills or shortage of prioritization. Change happens, otherwise there would be no need for a team of agilists. If these agile practitioners can integrate change with appropriate refactoring, then you will get well-designed, simple to maintain systems. Documentation is another challenge. If your teams don't have the skills, then documentation means that it takes longer and more effort to produce a very complicated, confusing, and hard to maintain, but hopefully well-documented codebase. Even the more skilled agile practitioners out there are still learning. So the "right way" to do something is going to do continuous learning. People who "do" rather than "be" anything tend to end up as the worst case studies. Don't blame "Aglie," the problem is lack of skill. Ideally you need to be able to recognize, acquire, grow and retain good people. If your organization chooses not to do this, then they get what they've got.
It is critical to maintain the core values of Agile. You can't blame agile for bad architecture, poor craftsmanship, lack of valuing agile principles, lack of true agility across the organization, etc. Agile is too often misused and teams move too fast and they are faced with sacrificing reliable delivery, quality and/or technical excellence. With time boxing, the team is often chooses to sacrifice quality and/or technical excellence. It is critical to maintain the core values. Agility means using what works and adapting to make it continue to improve, even it that means removing things that no longer work. There are times you have to introduce something that might make Agile "purists" cringe, even if it is just to facilitate learning a concept. The whole notion of "agility" to be including the notion that you have to stay flexible and choose the right approach each time you approach a project. But sometimes that may mean doing something that seems less "Agile" from an academic perspective. If those cases exist, then not doing so in them would be less "Agile", in reality. And that's just what people do when they think they have the truth "cornered." If you don't have skills, or if you are not allowed to use them, it is not an Agile problem, it is an organizational problem, it is a management problem, it is in the end your problem. What Agile did is highlighted the problem for all to see, so the upper management, can rightly know it is their business decisions that got them here. After all, it is a business decision how you run your business, and issues outlined are all business problems which caused technical problems.
Agile is both a philosophy and methodology to run a digital organization; Digital organization as a whole is anti-fragile, but some parts maybe fragile, via applying tailored agility, the digital organization with anti-fragile characteristics can better survive and thrive in volatility and uncertainty, and it can well adapt to the business nature of complexity and interdependence, as well as lift business maturity significantly.
Digitalization is like a flywheel, and Digital Masters are the one riding above it. Surf more Information about Digital Master:
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Introduction URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTube
Digital Master Fun QuizFollow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
A Learning Mind
The more we learning; the more we feel humbled.
At individual level, being a continuous learner is no longer simply a choice one can make. It is a necessity and imperative; if one expects to add value, to compete for the future with authenticity and consistency. At organizational level, the always-on, hyperconnected global workplace opens a whole new world on how to build both creative and productive workforce; to put simply, how to shape a learning culture -from mindset to mind flow, grooming more collective learning minds?
A learning mind is more adaptive: Only a learning mind has better cognitive ability to adjust to the change; and adaptation is critical for surviving and thriving in today’s dynamic world. We can learn from our own experiences, books, media or other people's experiences. From business perspective, due to the complexity of knowledge and the number of ways by which we learn, it is vital that organization development continue to evolve just to keep up with the cultural changes. Considering that we are always learning, it is very important that we get the staff to be proactive in the changes an organization could possibly face and what needs to be in place to counter those changes. It is important that we don't over think a resolution and avoid making simple things complicated by making complicated things simple.
A learning mind keeps life flow. Learning is the way to keep your mind flow, hence your life flow. Because when you stop learning, you are stagnant. The curiosity as a human nature, motivates you to learn - “there are so many things I don't know and I want to know them all.” Then knowledge is the result of lessons we learned by exploitation of our curiosity! And knowledge can be extracted into wisdom; whereas wisdom encourages to keep on gathering knowledge. Wisdom + Knowledge = life......a never ending fact-finding mission.
A learning mind has more dots to connect for sparking innovation. It's important to make connections between pieces of knowledge. When these connections are structured in a meaningful way, we are better to retrieve and apply knowledge effectively and powerfully; or to connect the dots to spark the fresh ideas or to create the new knowledge. The character or the life experience guides our gut feel, so that we intuitively know the right decision. Wisdom is also part of this, the integration of lessons, experience and knowledge.
The purpose of education is to both satisfy those learning minds and inspire more minds to learn. The future of learning will require to break away from the current one-size-fits-all mold and move to a more customized learning platform to really encourage people in their strengths and interests. Education has to adapt to a faster learning method; informal or online learning is the key option to learn and become who you really are or who you want to be.
Life is an eternal learning curve, you just have to continue to learn and ride above it.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
At individual level, being a continuous learner is no longer simply a choice one can make. It is a necessity and imperative; if one expects to add value, to compete for the future with authenticity and consistency. At organizational level, the always-on, hyperconnected global workplace opens a whole new world on how to build both creative and productive workforce; to put simply, how to shape a learning culture -from mindset to mind flow, grooming more collective learning minds?
A learning mind is more adaptive: Only a learning mind has better cognitive ability to adjust to the change; and adaptation is critical for surviving and thriving in today’s dynamic world. We can learn from our own experiences, books, media or other people's experiences. From business perspective, due to the complexity of knowledge and the number of ways by which we learn, it is vital that organization development continue to evolve just to keep up with the cultural changes. Considering that we are always learning, it is very important that we get the staff to be proactive in the changes an organization could possibly face and what needs to be in place to counter those changes. It is important that we don't over think a resolution and avoid making simple things complicated by making complicated things simple.
A learning mind keeps life flow. Learning is the way to keep your mind flow, hence your life flow. Because when you stop learning, you are stagnant. The curiosity as a human nature, motivates you to learn - “there are so many things I don't know and I want to know them all.” Then knowledge is the result of lessons we learned by exploitation of our curiosity! And knowledge can be extracted into wisdom; whereas wisdom encourages to keep on gathering knowledge. Wisdom + Knowledge = life......a never ending fact-finding mission.
A learning mind has more dots to connect for sparking innovation. It's important to make connections between pieces of knowledge. When these connections are structured in a meaningful way, we are better to retrieve and apply knowledge effectively and powerfully; or to connect the dots to spark the fresh ideas or to create the new knowledge. The character or the life experience guides our gut feel, so that we intuitively know the right decision. Wisdom is also part of this, the integration of lessons, experience and knowledge.
The purpose of education is to both satisfy those learning minds and inspire more minds to learn. The future of learning will require to break away from the current one-size-fits-all mold and move to a more customized learning platform to really encourage people in their strengths and interests. Education has to adapt to a faster learning method; informal or online learning is the key option to learn and become who you really are or who you want to be.
Life is an eternal learning curve, you just have to continue to learn and ride above it.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Customer Satisfaction is…….
Customer satisfaction is to balance customer needs and company needs so that both the business and customers comes out the winner.
Every forward-thinking organization is thriving to become a customer centric organization, to fill out the blank; customer satisfaction is______.Customer satisfaction is a solid, trusting business relationship, which results in customer retention and customer referrals allowing you to build a strong customer base.Customer satisfaction is to create an unforgettably positive experience where the customer will be compelled to return and will also be proud to share that experience with others.Customer satisfaction is to fully understand and identify the customers needs to ensure that you provide them with the proper products/services they require in a timely manner. This allows them to complete their task at hand with as little inconvenience or interruption as possible. Price is important but great customer service will nearly always prevail.Customer satisfaction is to connect a product or service with customers who need them. The best outcome is a well informed satisfied customer who increases your bottom line with a sale followed by word of mouth recommendations.
Customer satisfaction can lead to customer loyalty; however, the "good things" you get - fine quality product, good service, etc. - are often taken as granted at today's age of information abundance. So customers might go to somewhere else as well if they get a better promise. We are living in a world where competition for products is very stiff and this calls for new innovation on products all the time to maintain loyal customers.True customer service is a function that allows good communication between the business and the end users. An opened communication that serves both parties resulting in a successful arrangement, when all goals are met the results are fantastic. The great service will only take you so far but does provide a foundation. The whole company needs to understand that it takes a lot of time to build a relationship; and consequently service from quality of product to delivery and invoicing must also be at excellent levels at being competitively priced, then customers will have no reason to even think of going to another provider. This also ensures more satisfied employees and a positive loop is created. Customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction are the two sides of the same coin to run a high-performing and high mature digital organization. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Every forward-thinking organization is thriving to become a customer centric organization, to fill out the blank; customer satisfaction is______.Customer satisfaction is a solid, trusting business relationship, which results in customer retention and customer referrals allowing you to build a strong customer base.Customer satisfaction is to create an unforgettably positive experience where the customer will be compelled to return and will also be proud to share that experience with others.Customer satisfaction is to fully understand and identify the customers needs to ensure that you provide them with the proper products/services they require in a timely manner. This allows them to complete their task at hand with as little inconvenience or interruption as possible. Price is important but great customer service will nearly always prevail.Customer satisfaction is to connect a product or service with customers who need them. The best outcome is a well informed satisfied customer who increases your bottom line with a sale followed by word of mouth recommendations.
Customer satisfaction can lead to customer loyalty; however, the "good things" you get - fine quality product, good service, etc. - are often taken as granted at today's age of information abundance. So customers might go to somewhere else as well if they get a better promise. We are living in a world where competition for products is very stiff and this calls for new innovation on products all the time to maintain loyal customers.True customer service is a function that allows good communication between the business and the end users. An opened communication that serves both parties resulting in a successful arrangement, when all goals are met the results are fantastic. The great service will only take you so far but does provide a foundation. The whole company needs to understand that it takes a lot of time to build a relationship; and consequently service from quality of product to delivery and invoicing must also be at excellent levels at being competitively priced, then customers will have no reason to even think of going to another provider. This also ensures more satisfied employees and a positive loop is created. Customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction are the two sides of the same coin to run a high-performing and high mature digital organization. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
February 3, 2015
Digital Master Tuning XXX: Complimentary Team vs. Competitive Team - How to Build a High-Performing Team?
It takes both complimentary actions and competitive actions in constructive/professional way to build a trust in teams
Digital businesses are hyper-connected and interdependent; the nature of team is also shifting from homogeneous setting into heterogeneous characteristic; the further debate is: Complimentary team or competitive team, which can build more trust and achieve high-performing result? What's the strategy and tactics to shape a high mature digital master?
Competitive teams more often show low levels of trust. Power and control, as one of the core human needs, is high and needs to be maintained at all cost. Hence in a team that is fragmented in terms of trust, effort and collective energy, the ego has to be fed rather than the team output, which leads to a significant drop in productivity. What would you do without trust? Ever tried to play/work on a team or with a group with no trust? It is very challenging. Competing against one another slows the team down and can stall innovative thinking. There are some traits that come in pairs and act in opposition to each other. One of those pairs is Trust and Control. The more we trust, the less we need to control each other. When we start to lose trust, we begin creating rules and trying to control others.
A good team is a cohesive group of people with complimentary skills, saddled with the responsibility to deliver on specific projects. High performing teams succeed because they are coopetitive in nature. Irrespective, strict adherence to team ground rules will sustain trust. A complementary team (with some overlap in skills) with differentiated competency always tried to be ahead of others but in a constructive way and nor destructive way. There are less obstacles and pitfalls to navigate and overcome when team members trust one another. So, it would seem reasonable to suggest that in whatever environment you are in, if there is a lack of trust, then there would most likely be an over-abundance of control mechanisms. Because the over-abundance of control mechanisms is when you don't have the collaborative framework with checks and balances within the teams.
It takes both complimentary actions and competitive actions in constructive/professional way to build a trust in teams. The complimentary actions provide the basis for the trust but the competitive actions in the constructive way strengthen that trust. If you think about the question in terms of an sport team, all of the complementary actions during practice, travel, and games build a baseline level of trust but it is the competition among the various players strengthens (or deepens) the trust if competing in professional way. If you are competing with 100% effort, everyone on the team around you sees that effort and it signals that you are all in. If I see you giving 100% then I am inspired to give that same level of effort. The sum of the competition equals a complimentary overall effort, both supporting the trust you are trying to build.
Trust is about relationship; and control is about micro-management. Trust is lack of fear; trust can only be built through communication to some extent, but it’s human instinct and it depended on the actions (and not words). In order to get more trust, one not only has to communicate, but also demonstrate through actions. Control is about micromanagement (if you will) putting checks (not balances) around things where it's not required. The feedback loop control is about mechanics/engineering and not human. Trust can not be forced, though, any more than you can get fruit out of a tree by pulling on its branches. True trust has to be nurtured from the soil and in combination with appropriate micro and macro-climates. If you try and force it, then it will only be a compliance-based form of trust which is a very poor substitute. Trust is also about relationship, one’s belief that something is reliable, honest, effective, ethical so on and so forth. When people start fearing about lack of any of these elements they lose trust.
That same trust will create an inherent level of control as the team self-corrects. The caution is, the more actively an individual member of the team tries to control the team the more you negate the self-correcting instinct. Successful team with a strong basis of trust tend to be a balance of the two actions. If each team member executes their objectives, and the team's goal is well understood, then trust within the team will be high regardless of how competitive each is. Trust comes with person's personality, time and actions. Analogy to it would be the cruise control in the car, the question is how many trusted it when they used for the first time and were not over cautious. Similarly it’s in any relationship where trust is built and without it it would be a chaos. Competitive teams focus on the other teams and try very hard to surpass them for their own benefit. This seriously undermines mutual trust. Complimentary teams focus on giving and taking thus making them and the other teams stronger, but, still, their primary objective is always to be better than the other to have more reward. This is more or less collaboration with ulterior motives resulting in pseudo uptake in trust which is short-lived.
Collaborative management, is essential -or it’s all about "coorpetition." Complimentary and competitive teams can both produce positive results, but more often teams who operate individually, compete collectively and manage collaboratively are usually the winners! Collaboration, teamwork, unity bring strength. Everyone wins. Competition brings a spirit of fight, win-lose. In a competitive environment, you don't work together; you work against each other, because in order to win, the other team must lose. In competition, sabotage becomes an option in order to win. If you don't share resources, you have a better chance to win. It may cause destructive behavior, unprofessional attitude and toxic culture. In collaboration there is definitely a mix of complementary and competitive but the goal is still to win, not from internal teams but external environment. The constructive internal competition is good unless and until it does not hurt the organization and its vision.
Build a conductive organizational climate: Don't forget about communication, transparency and acts of integrity on the part of management in creating organizational trust…without a conducive organizational climate, it is quite difficult to do the right things like transparent communication, display of integrity, and making people believe in the value of mutual trust. When there are noble, admirable, and inspiring shared goals, they become more credible and acceptable. If you can build the right culture to focus on shared goals where they mutually trust each other. Conducive organizational environments (Culture) need to be created and sustained.
The real answer is Co-Creating Teams. When teams are cultured to focus on the shared goals of the organization, they compete (professionally) and compliment (when needed) towards the attainment of the shared goals and that creates conducive environment for mutual trust to flourish. Organizations need to pay more attention in creating shared and admirable goals and then encourage the teams to compete and collaborate as they deem fit. Trust created this way will be lasting and enjoyable, and also create synergy to accelerate the flywheel of digital transformation.
Digitalization is like a flywheel, and Digital Masters are the one riding above it. Surf more Information about Digital Master:
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Introduction URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTube
Digital Master Fun Quiz
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital businesses are hyper-connected and interdependent; the nature of team is also shifting from homogeneous setting into heterogeneous characteristic; the further debate is: Complimentary team or competitive team, which can build more trust and achieve high-performing result? What's the strategy and tactics to shape a high mature digital master?
Competitive teams more often show low levels of trust. Power and control, as one of the core human needs, is high and needs to be maintained at all cost. Hence in a team that is fragmented in terms of trust, effort and collective energy, the ego has to be fed rather than the team output, which leads to a significant drop in productivity. What would you do without trust? Ever tried to play/work on a team or with a group with no trust? It is very challenging. Competing against one another slows the team down and can stall innovative thinking. There are some traits that come in pairs and act in opposition to each other. One of those pairs is Trust and Control. The more we trust, the less we need to control each other. When we start to lose trust, we begin creating rules and trying to control others.
A good team is a cohesive group of people with complimentary skills, saddled with the responsibility to deliver on specific projects. High performing teams succeed because they are coopetitive in nature. Irrespective, strict adherence to team ground rules will sustain trust. A complementary team (with some overlap in skills) with differentiated competency always tried to be ahead of others but in a constructive way and nor destructive way. There are less obstacles and pitfalls to navigate and overcome when team members trust one another. So, it would seem reasonable to suggest that in whatever environment you are in, if there is a lack of trust, then there would most likely be an over-abundance of control mechanisms. Because the over-abundance of control mechanisms is when you don't have the collaborative framework with checks and balances within the teams.
It takes both complimentary actions and competitive actions in constructive/professional way to build a trust in teams. The complimentary actions provide the basis for the trust but the competitive actions in the constructive way strengthen that trust. If you think about the question in terms of an sport team, all of the complementary actions during practice, travel, and games build a baseline level of trust but it is the competition among the various players strengthens (or deepens) the trust if competing in professional way. If you are competing with 100% effort, everyone on the team around you sees that effort and it signals that you are all in. If I see you giving 100% then I am inspired to give that same level of effort. The sum of the competition equals a complimentary overall effort, both supporting the trust you are trying to build.
Trust is about relationship; and control is about micro-management. Trust is lack of fear; trust can only be built through communication to some extent, but it’s human instinct and it depended on the actions (and not words). In order to get more trust, one not only has to communicate, but also demonstrate through actions. Control is about micromanagement (if you will) putting checks (not balances) around things where it's not required. The feedback loop control is about mechanics/engineering and not human. Trust can not be forced, though, any more than you can get fruit out of a tree by pulling on its branches. True trust has to be nurtured from the soil and in combination with appropriate micro and macro-climates. If you try and force it, then it will only be a compliance-based form of trust which is a very poor substitute. Trust is also about relationship, one’s belief that something is reliable, honest, effective, ethical so on and so forth. When people start fearing about lack of any of these elements they lose trust.
That same trust will create an inherent level of control as the team self-corrects. The caution is, the more actively an individual member of the team tries to control the team the more you negate the self-correcting instinct. Successful team with a strong basis of trust tend to be a balance of the two actions. If each team member executes their objectives, and the team's goal is well understood, then trust within the team will be high regardless of how competitive each is. Trust comes with person's personality, time and actions. Analogy to it would be the cruise control in the car, the question is how many trusted it when they used for the first time and were not over cautious. Similarly it’s in any relationship where trust is built and without it it would be a chaos. Competitive teams focus on the other teams and try very hard to surpass them for their own benefit. This seriously undermines mutual trust. Complimentary teams focus on giving and taking thus making them and the other teams stronger, but, still, their primary objective is always to be better than the other to have more reward. This is more or less collaboration with ulterior motives resulting in pseudo uptake in trust which is short-lived.
Collaborative management, is essential -or it’s all about "coorpetition." Complimentary and competitive teams can both produce positive results, but more often teams who operate individually, compete collectively and manage collaboratively are usually the winners! Collaboration, teamwork, unity bring strength. Everyone wins. Competition brings a spirit of fight, win-lose. In a competitive environment, you don't work together; you work against each other, because in order to win, the other team must lose. In competition, sabotage becomes an option in order to win. If you don't share resources, you have a better chance to win. It may cause destructive behavior, unprofessional attitude and toxic culture. In collaboration there is definitely a mix of complementary and competitive but the goal is still to win, not from internal teams but external environment. The constructive internal competition is good unless and until it does not hurt the organization and its vision.
Build a conductive organizational climate: Don't forget about communication, transparency and acts of integrity on the part of management in creating organizational trust…without a conducive organizational climate, it is quite difficult to do the right things like transparent communication, display of integrity, and making people believe in the value of mutual trust. When there are noble, admirable, and inspiring shared goals, they become more credible and acceptable. If you can build the right culture to focus on shared goals where they mutually trust each other. Conducive organizational environments (Culture) need to be created and sustained.
The real answer is Co-Creating Teams. When teams are cultured to focus on the shared goals of the organization, they compete (professionally) and compliment (when needed) towards the attainment of the shared goals and that creates conducive environment for mutual trust to flourish. Organizations need to pay more attention in creating shared and admirable goals and then encourage the teams to compete and collaborate as they deem fit. Trust created this way will be lasting and enjoyable, and also create synergy to accelerate the flywheel of digital transformation.
Digitalization is like a flywheel, and Digital Masters are the one riding above it. Surf more Information about Digital Master:
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Introduction URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTube
Digital Master Fun Quiz
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
January 31, 2015
Digital Master TUning XXIIII: How to Keep Organization Flow
“All things move and nothing remains still.” -Heraclitus
Organizations, like individuals, need to be in flow to operate smoothly. An organization achieves this state of equilibrium through its management layers. In other words, an organization can approach the flow zone when the positions in its hierarchy have clear, accountable tasks. To put simply, how to keep organizations flow and grow into digital masters?
Delayering becomes a lens through which it is possible to examine and then fix many other issues. If structure drives behavior and people are able of (self-)reflection, then the responsibility could be to reflect on the structure and the behavior, give feedback and - if necessary / useful - aim for and/or facilitate changing the structure. If you're an employee, you can ask your manager to change the structure. If you're a citizen, you can ask your political representative to change the structure. If you're a manager, you can change the structure by changing the way of working / tasks / roles / responsibilities / targets etc.
The power and responsibility should go hand in hand. Power is the capacity to achieve purpose and purpose is the source of power. Human action integrates purpose and power. However, in most of circumstances, the persons with a lot of power does not like to delegate responsibility to lower levels, especially in case of failures. If responsibility didn't follow power, distributed to co-workers, manager would be in trouble. S/he is held responsible for department results by top management and to succeed s/he needs to distribute responsibility between employees using leadership skills. To keep the employees within the loop, feedback and rewards are the main elements of a positive management along with clear and challenging objective. The way organizations manage their commitments is an expression and reflection of management’s integrity. How one manages accountabilities rest on this ground.
Organizations have personalities in the same way that an individual does. Most often, an organization's personality replicates the personality of its leader. In organizations that tend to "shoot from the hip," there is a lack of strategic and tactical plans for problem solving, or the plan is written on high and passed down in stone without employee participation. All too often, plans are written and stuck on a shelf. The result is an absence of guidance in daily problem solving. If you look at a business as a collection of subsystems, in simplest terms, the organizational factors are how those subsystems are structured within the larger system and how they interact with each other. Those interactions can be technical, informational, human, or structural, to name a few.
Push/encourage teams to "think in bigger boxes" (think outside of your job description and consider company and industry and even societal impacts). Engage all employees in improving their processes, and create the expectation that positive behaviors and mutual respect are valued above everything else. Assume that every problem has multiple solutions and ask yourself and others for "three ways we might address this issue." (push for multiple solutions.) Take the time to look at every situation from multiple points of view (customer POV, supplier POV, management POV, etc).
As organizational design researchers well put, the key diagnostic can be summed up in two simple questions: “Are you big enough for your job?” and “Is your job big enough for you?” If the answer to both is “yes” throughout the organization, then it is in flow. Well tune your team or organizational structure so they can best express this purpose and accountability. And keep them flow.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Organizations, like individuals, need to be in flow to operate smoothly. An organization achieves this state of equilibrium through its management layers. In other words, an organization can approach the flow zone when the positions in its hierarchy have clear, accountable tasks. To put simply, how to keep organizations flow and grow into digital masters?Delayering becomes a lens through which it is possible to examine and then fix many other issues. If structure drives behavior and people are able of (self-)reflection, then the responsibility could be to reflect on the structure and the behavior, give feedback and - if necessary / useful - aim for and/or facilitate changing the structure. If you're an employee, you can ask your manager to change the structure. If you're a citizen, you can ask your political representative to change the structure. If you're a manager, you can change the structure by changing the way of working / tasks / roles / responsibilities / targets etc.
The power and responsibility should go hand in hand. Power is the capacity to achieve purpose and purpose is the source of power. Human action integrates purpose and power. However, in most of circumstances, the persons with a lot of power does not like to delegate responsibility to lower levels, especially in case of failures. If responsibility didn't follow power, distributed to co-workers, manager would be in trouble. S/he is held responsible for department results by top management and to succeed s/he needs to distribute responsibility between employees using leadership skills. To keep the employees within the loop, feedback and rewards are the main elements of a positive management along with clear and challenging objective. The way organizations manage their commitments is an expression and reflection of management’s integrity. How one manages accountabilities rest on this ground.
Organizations have personalities in the same way that an individual does. Most often, an organization's personality replicates the personality of its leader. In organizations that tend to "shoot from the hip," there is a lack of strategic and tactical plans for problem solving, or the plan is written on high and passed down in stone without employee participation. All too often, plans are written and stuck on a shelf. The result is an absence of guidance in daily problem solving. If you look at a business as a collection of subsystems, in simplest terms, the organizational factors are how those subsystems are structured within the larger system and how they interact with each other. Those interactions can be technical, informational, human, or structural, to name a few.
Push/encourage teams to "think in bigger boxes" (think outside of your job description and consider company and industry and even societal impacts). Engage all employees in improving their processes, and create the expectation that positive behaviors and mutual respect are valued above everything else. Assume that every problem has multiple solutions and ask yourself and others for "three ways we might address this issue." (push for multiple solutions.) Take the time to look at every situation from multiple points of view (customer POV, supplier POV, management POV, etc).
As organizational design researchers well put, the key diagnostic can be summed up in two simple questions: “Are you big enough for your job?” and “Is your job big enough for you?” If the answer to both is “yes” throughout the organization, then it is in flow. Well tune your team or organizational structure so they can best express this purpose and accountability. And keep them flow.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
From Big Data to Decision Management
The full data-performance life cycle includes data --> analysis --> decisions --> performance.
Businesses enter the digital era of Big Data, with business dynamic of velocity, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, how to make the right decision by the right people at the right timing also becomes strategic imperative, because it will directly make impact on business’s short term bottom line and long time prosperity.
Decision Management is still an emerging discipline. The whole purpose of analytics is to make better decisions based on data (big/small). You can call it with any name like decision management/theory/science/technology/engineering. The typical challenge seen with the traditional analytics approach is to arrive at insights, but not necessarily affect actual business decisions; and not always in a timely manner. Decision management /engineering approach embeds analytics in actual business decision scenario- rather than leaving it to the receiver of insights to use.
The full data-performance life cycle includes data --> analysis --> decisions --> performance. Analytics is means to the end, not the end. However, in reality, there is not enough focus on decisions. So a lot of people get a bit caught up on the analysis as if this is the end of the process: data --> analysis --> conformance. No, if the analysis doesn't lead to performance, it's rubbish irrespective of the apparent eloquence. This actually represents a problematic situation if a statistical approach cannot deliver the expected return; people might start to question the competence of the researcher rather than suitability of the approach. Also keep in mind that if a statistical approach is indeed the solution, at some point the researcher is not required; and a great many organizations would like this to be the case as it justifies the capital expenditure. Keep in mind any decision-model runs the risk of creating a false sense of precision and confidence.
The role of a decision model is to systematize one's preferences and beliefs and identify their consequences (as specified); thus allowing critical comparison of one's holistic view to the consequences of the formally specified one. If the formal specification is reasonably close to the truth, this critical comparison is very helpful, because whenever you find a difference, you have the opportunity to improve either the intuitions (= an insight) or the model (= fix a bug or improve the logic). When the two points of view are reconciled, both are improved, the model corresponds to the gut feel, and it identifies a choice with a rationale that works.
Framing the analysis in terms of the span from worst to best on each criterion as a decision management practice. Without that, the analysis is working in the realm of tangible measures rather than the preferences it is intended to embody. The “SMART” (Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique) decision technique solves this problem by using weights based on moving from the worst to the best in various criteria. There's an art to using it, but it works well, even for a combination of rational and emotional criteria. Another way to look at it is not as two criteria to be balanced, but a single criterion to be maximized, specifically the expected value of the market size. You just multiply to get this expected value. So multi-criterion decision analysis doesn't even apply here.
Improving decision quality is about reducing the uncertainties of the most variable elements. The process of working with decision-makers to support their thinking through is subjective though, how they judge tradeoffs between choice criteria is more influential on decision quality than marginal improvements in the choice of multi-factor attribute analysis methods. Secondly, presenting forecasts of outcomes in value distribution terms contributes to creating a proper awareness of the reality that in many decisions, good decision making merely reduces the risk of errors, in the face of an uncertain future environment.
Still, analytics is just a tool, like any type of management, decision management is both art and science; thinking fast and slow; it has to well combine the analytics and intuition; information and experience, management and engineering, and manage decision life cycle with effectiveness and agility.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Businesses enter the digital era of Big Data, with business dynamic of velocity, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, how to make the right decision by the right people at the right timing also becomes strategic imperative, because it will directly make impact on business’s short term bottom line and long time prosperity.
Decision Management is still an emerging discipline. The whole purpose of analytics is to make better decisions based on data (big/small). You can call it with any name like decision management/theory/science/technology/engineering. The typical challenge seen with the traditional analytics approach is to arrive at insights, but not necessarily affect actual business decisions; and not always in a timely manner. Decision management /engineering approach embeds analytics in actual business decision scenario- rather than leaving it to the receiver of insights to use.
The full data-performance life cycle includes data --> analysis --> decisions --> performance. Analytics is means to the end, not the end. However, in reality, there is not enough focus on decisions. So a lot of people get a bit caught up on the analysis as if this is the end of the process: data --> analysis --> conformance. No, if the analysis doesn't lead to performance, it's rubbish irrespective of the apparent eloquence. This actually represents a problematic situation if a statistical approach cannot deliver the expected return; people might start to question the competence of the researcher rather than suitability of the approach. Also keep in mind that if a statistical approach is indeed the solution, at some point the researcher is not required; and a great many organizations would like this to be the case as it justifies the capital expenditure. Keep in mind any decision-model runs the risk of creating a false sense of precision and confidence.
The role of a decision model is to systematize one's preferences and beliefs and identify their consequences (as specified); thus allowing critical comparison of one's holistic view to the consequences of the formally specified one. If the formal specification is reasonably close to the truth, this critical comparison is very helpful, because whenever you find a difference, you have the opportunity to improve either the intuitions (= an insight) or the model (= fix a bug or improve the logic). When the two points of view are reconciled, both are improved, the model corresponds to the gut feel, and it identifies a choice with a rationale that works.
Framing the analysis in terms of the span from worst to best on each criterion as a decision management practice. Without that, the analysis is working in the realm of tangible measures rather than the preferences it is intended to embody. The “SMART” (Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique) decision technique solves this problem by using weights based on moving from the worst to the best in various criteria. There's an art to using it, but it works well, even for a combination of rational and emotional criteria. Another way to look at it is not as two criteria to be balanced, but a single criterion to be maximized, specifically the expected value of the market size. You just multiply to get this expected value. So multi-criterion decision analysis doesn't even apply here.
Improving decision quality is about reducing the uncertainties of the most variable elements. The process of working with decision-makers to support their thinking through is subjective though, how they judge tradeoffs between choice criteria is more influential on decision quality than marginal improvements in the choice of multi-factor attribute analysis methods. Secondly, presenting forecasts of outcomes in value distribution terms contributes to creating a proper awareness of the reality that in many decisions, good decision making merely reduces the risk of errors, in the face of an uncertain future environment.
Still, analytics is just a tool, like any type of management, decision management is both art and science; thinking fast and slow; it has to well combine the analytics and intuition; information and experience, management and engineering, and manage decision life cycle with effectiveness and agility.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
January 30, 2015
The Pros and Cons of Net Promoter Score
The intent behind NPS is well conceived ... but it is not the magic silver bullet that is necessarily relevant everywhere.
“Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures the loyalty that exists between a provider and a consumer. The provider can be a company, employer or any other entity. The provider is the entity that is asking the questions on the NPS survey. The consumer is the customer, employee, or respondent to an NPS survey.” (Wikipedia). On one side, it is a very popular and well-accepted term to measure customer experience; on the other side, some worry there are declining relevance of NPS, so what are the pros and cons to measure NPS?
NPS only goes one inch deep, businesses shall dig three-feet in-depth to find the root cause of business problems. Organizations are hiding their inefficiencies behind a good NPS score instead of addressing the real issues that are plaguing their organization. Back office inefficiencies and lack of stakeholder buy in rank top on the list of issues why NPS score is losing its relevance. NPS is so well marketed and has become so widely known that is almost a fashion accessory that senior executives automatically assume it must be good without necessarily really knowing what they are signing up to; or in the other cases, for many companies and consumers, NPS is still a very new / emerging concept, and so many consumers don't yet suffer from NPS burn-out. Either way, many users of NPS do not understand how to extract real strategic value from the system but still go ahead with surveys and/or inappropriate applications at the wrong point in a customer relationship. The 'Recommend Question' is now so widespread that it has become meaningless to the average customer who is staggering under the survey fatigue. The market is moving on continuously.
Customer surveys to measure NPS are not one size fits all, they need to get tweaked or tuned. Customer Loyalty, which is at the heart of the NPS, will always remain key to all; but sometimes it’s the most short term and exploitative business relationships. The "recommendation" question does not work in all circumstances and may require tweaking or changing with something more relevant. It does though often add significant value. Overall relationship and "touch-point" surveys may require the use of different questions! Gathering data and creating KPIs is the easy part! Once obvious quick-wins have been taken, driving systemic change in the Customer Experience is hard work and often is challenged by other business imperatives which may be shorter term and more easily understood.
The further analysis of interactions with customers is complementary to NPS: Companies want to use NPS to drive operational excellence - but don't get the insights they are looking for to help them decide what to focus on. Do analysis of actual interactions with customers (phone calls, letters, emails, Web chat etc.) - to identify how well and how consistently front line staff are building relationships with customers - and how proactively they are representing their organization. Focusing on helpful and unhelpful behaviours - tone of communication, relevance and clarity of information, acknowledging concerns and rapport building, for example - can be more productive than tracking an overall score only.
The true business optimization is Employee Engagement (EE) x Customer Experience (CX). One issue is that an excessive focus on statistics and an absence of validated evidence that prolonged use of NPS actually delivers continuous economic improvement and so supports sustainability! The other problem with NPS is that it fails to address the reality that customer loyalty is the child of high levels of employee engagement preferably compounded by meaningful community involvement. Human Sigma tells us that true business optimization is Employee Engagement (EE) x Customer Experience (CX) so companies that measure and manage only CX will never discover the full potential that a comprehensive engagement strategy can deliver! The consensus that careful selection of the measures that are meaningful to staff, are worth asking customers and which focus time, resources and attention to fix are what matters.
The intent behind NPS is well conceived ... but it is not the magic silver bullet that is necessarily relevant everywhere. That said, NPS is ultimately just a tool, and like any tool only works if used correctly. Implementing surveys is easy, the hard part is getting people to take meaningful actions based upon what is learned.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
“Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures the loyalty that exists between a provider and a consumer. The provider can be a company, employer or any other entity. The provider is the entity that is asking the questions on the NPS survey. The consumer is the customer, employee, or respondent to an NPS survey.” (Wikipedia). On one side, it is a very popular and well-accepted term to measure customer experience; on the other side, some worry there are declining relevance of NPS, so what are the pros and cons to measure NPS?
NPS only goes one inch deep, businesses shall dig three-feet in-depth to find the root cause of business problems. Organizations are hiding their inefficiencies behind a good NPS score instead of addressing the real issues that are plaguing their organization. Back office inefficiencies and lack of stakeholder buy in rank top on the list of issues why NPS score is losing its relevance. NPS is so well marketed and has become so widely known that is almost a fashion accessory that senior executives automatically assume it must be good without necessarily really knowing what they are signing up to; or in the other cases, for many companies and consumers, NPS is still a very new / emerging concept, and so many consumers don't yet suffer from NPS burn-out. Either way, many users of NPS do not understand how to extract real strategic value from the system but still go ahead with surveys and/or inappropriate applications at the wrong point in a customer relationship. The 'Recommend Question' is now so widespread that it has become meaningless to the average customer who is staggering under the survey fatigue. The market is moving on continuously.
Customer surveys to measure NPS are not one size fits all, they need to get tweaked or tuned. Customer Loyalty, which is at the heart of the NPS, will always remain key to all; but sometimes it’s the most short term and exploitative business relationships. The "recommendation" question does not work in all circumstances and may require tweaking or changing with something more relevant. It does though often add significant value. Overall relationship and "touch-point" surveys may require the use of different questions! Gathering data and creating KPIs is the easy part! Once obvious quick-wins have been taken, driving systemic change in the Customer Experience is hard work and often is challenged by other business imperatives which may be shorter term and more easily understood.
The further analysis of interactions with customers is complementary to NPS: Companies want to use NPS to drive operational excellence - but don't get the insights they are looking for to help them decide what to focus on. Do analysis of actual interactions with customers (phone calls, letters, emails, Web chat etc.) - to identify how well and how consistently front line staff are building relationships with customers - and how proactively they are representing their organization. Focusing on helpful and unhelpful behaviours - tone of communication, relevance and clarity of information, acknowledging concerns and rapport building, for example - can be more productive than tracking an overall score only.
The true business optimization is Employee Engagement (EE) x Customer Experience (CX). One issue is that an excessive focus on statistics and an absence of validated evidence that prolonged use of NPS actually delivers continuous economic improvement and so supports sustainability! The other problem with NPS is that it fails to address the reality that customer loyalty is the child of high levels of employee engagement preferably compounded by meaningful community involvement. Human Sigma tells us that true business optimization is Employee Engagement (EE) x Customer Experience (CX) so companies that measure and manage only CX will never discover the full potential that a comprehensive engagement strategy can deliver! The consensus that careful selection of the measures that are meaningful to staff, are worth asking customers and which focus time, resources and attention to fix are what matters.
The intent behind NPS is well conceived ... but it is not the magic silver bullet that is necessarily relevant everywhere. That said, NPS is ultimately just a tool, and like any tool only works if used correctly. Implementing surveys is easy, the hard part is getting people to take meaningful actions based upon what is learned.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
