Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1458
January 30, 2015
How to Grow a Wise Leader via Learning Life Cycle
A wide leader does not just follow, but discover the path; not just learn, but challenge the convention.
“Knowledge is power.” "The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know." "The less men think, the more they talk."....There are many good saying about thinking or learning or talking. From leadership perspective, how shall one grow from “teachable” to “knowledgeable” to “insightful,” and ultimately become wise leaders?
A wise leader sometimes looks like a 'fool' with such "conscious ignorance": The ignorance has a great value only if it's a "conscious ignorance." Because the more you know and more experiences you have, it's amazing how much you already know about things you learn. Your mind simply recognizes a pattern, but do you really discover the truth? Sometime ignorance is a necessary pre-condition for searching and seeking the truth. It is clear that ignorance is not an ideological purpose to be achieved. But, Without having a conscious ignorance you'll not find any motivation for seeking the truth and you will take decisions based on a partly and selective point of view without the elementary liberal criticism. In other words, to ignore the fact that any human knowledge is always a partial and selective and to consider that knowledge as an absolute truth is a big mistake as Socrates mention and without any reason to have doubts, it is also a potential of great danger. In this sense, "conscious ignorance" deserves its glory.
A wide leader does not just follow, but discover the path: All of the different approaches are out there to suit different minds to learn. Some people need a more analytical approach, some prefer a more people-centered approach, etc. many like simplicity, and feed all that information into an intuitive approach. Of course, we all have weaknesses, blind spots, and areas of personal ignorance. Wisdom is the application of knowledge suitable to the time and situation, to be wise you need all the knowledge you can get if there is enough, and then capture insight and foresight from it. As far as learning experience, one gets more knowledge but this knowledge in principle can't be considered as absolute truth. Therefore, your learning brings you closer and closer to the truth in that sense you know much more than before what is wrong. Knowledge is the human's only tool for reaching the truth. It is a limited tool since it might just get you closer to the truth but it never be able to finalized the way.
The basic principles of leadership, are simple. Figuring out all the ways to apply them in a multitude of situations with a variety of people, it takes a lifetime to master. Blanchard has talked about learning less more, meaning to learn fewer theories and lessons but learn them more deeply by trying something learning from your mistakes then applying those lessons next time. Put emphasis on the importance of getting feedback (a very critical one that is very candid and that helps you improve) to make practice perfect and eventually become a wise leader.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
“Knowledge is power.” "The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know." "The less men think, the more they talk."....There are many good saying about thinking or learning or talking. From leadership perspective, how shall one grow from “teachable” to “knowledgeable” to “insightful,” and ultimately become wise leaders?A wise leader sometimes looks like a 'fool' with such "conscious ignorance": The ignorance has a great value only if it's a "conscious ignorance." Because the more you know and more experiences you have, it's amazing how much you already know about things you learn. Your mind simply recognizes a pattern, but do you really discover the truth? Sometime ignorance is a necessary pre-condition for searching and seeking the truth. It is clear that ignorance is not an ideological purpose to be achieved. But, Without having a conscious ignorance you'll not find any motivation for seeking the truth and you will take decisions based on a partly and selective point of view without the elementary liberal criticism. In other words, to ignore the fact that any human knowledge is always a partial and selective and to consider that knowledge as an absolute truth is a big mistake as Socrates mention and without any reason to have doubts, it is also a potential of great danger. In this sense, "conscious ignorance" deserves its glory.
A wide leader does not just follow, but discover the path: All of the different approaches are out there to suit different minds to learn. Some people need a more analytical approach, some prefer a more people-centered approach, etc. many like simplicity, and feed all that information into an intuitive approach. Of course, we all have weaknesses, blind spots, and areas of personal ignorance. Wisdom is the application of knowledge suitable to the time and situation, to be wise you need all the knowledge you can get if there is enough, and then capture insight and foresight from it. As far as learning experience, one gets more knowledge but this knowledge in principle can't be considered as absolute truth. Therefore, your learning brings you closer and closer to the truth in that sense you know much more than before what is wrong. Knowledge is the human's only tool for reaching the truth. It is a limited tool since it might just get you closer to the truth but it never be able to finalized the way.
The basic principles of leadership, are simple. Figuring out all the ways to apply them in a multitude of situations with a variety of people, it takes a lifetime to master. Blanchard has talked about learning less more, meaning to learn fewer theories and lessons but learn them more deeply by trying something learning from your mistakes then applying those lessons next time. Put emphasis on the importance of getting feedback (a very critical one that is very candid and that helps you improve) to make practice perfect and eventually become a wise leader.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Agile Paradox: Is “Prescriptive” Agile Practical?
Agile is a paradox because Agile is not lack of disciplines, but needs to be more disciplined.
As an emergent software management methodology, Agile advocates interactive communication, iterative collaboration and continuous improvement. Based on its 12 agile principles, there are all sorts of agile explorement and deployment -Agile as management philosophy and principle; Agile's best practice or next practice; when, where and why should you be prescriptive in Agile software development approach? In other words, when, where and why should you be disciplined?
Agile is a paradox because Agile is not lack of disciplines, but needs to be more disciplined than any other development method. There is no hiding in Agile. Everyone has to tow their weight or the failures in the team would be immediately exposed.
"Prescriptive" Agile includes incremental recommendations to the team as they build experience. In most cases, organizations are not in a good position to leap directly to a mature agile team structure and supporting policies and culture, and to deliver effectively using a lightweight method that depends on "people over process" to assure high quality results. So "good prescriptive" agile would be well grounded and ideally, with really best practices and principles.
It is more about agile guidelines: You can measure whether practices are being done and to what degree, but each team is different, hence it isn't really prescription but more guidelines and heuristics. When doing agile, some of the permutations need to be adapted to: * Team gets the principles but are unsure how to get started. * Team has been told they must go agile so just want to know what it involves! * Team understands the principles, want to do it their own way, but there are constraints (stemming from scaling agility to a whole organization) * Team recognizes the new way of working, but wants a solid foundation on which to inspect and adapt * Team assumes that a guidebook will be given to them and that the agile practices completely replace everything else. There will only be a few invariant across the whole agile spectrum. What you shall worry more about is when teams 'inspect and adapt' without understanding the consequences.
Get it working right as it was designed to be used and then start stretching the envelope as required. The challenge for Agile in general, is to identify a universal set of foundational ideas that are both more fundamental (described in Agile Manifesto) and more specific (Agile practices). The philosophical foundation will identify key aspects of human nature that must be served - things being talked around in the Agile community. More specific are disciplines including the best parts of Scrum and XP.
Regardless of which flavor of Agile practices you explore, you need to follow Agile principle, people over process, change over documents, make continuous adjustment for your “prescriptive” agile formula, being agile rather than just doing Agile. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
As an emergent software management methodology, Agile advocates interactive communication, iterative collaboration and continuous improvement. Based on its 12 agile principles, there are all sorts of agile explorement and deployment -Agile as management philosophy and principle; Agile's best practice or next practice; when, where and why should you be prescriptive in Agile software development approach? In other words, when, where and why should you be disciplined?
Agile is a paradox because Agile is not lack of disciplines, but needs to be more disciplined than any other development method. There is no hiding in Agile. Everyone has to tow their weight or the failures in the team would be immediately exposed.
"Prescriptive" Agile includes incremental recommendations to the team as they build experience. In most cases, organizations are not in a good position to leap directly to a mature agile team structure and supporting policies and culture, and to deliver effectively using a lightweight method that depends on "people over process" to assure high quality results. So "good prescriptive" agile would be well grounded and ideally, with really best practices and principles.
It is more about agile guidelines: You can measure whether practices are being done and to what degree, but each team is different, hence it isn't really prescription but more guidelines and heuristics. When doing agile, some of the permutations need to be adapted to: * Team gets the principles but are unsure how to get started. * Team has been told they must go agile so just want to know what it involves! * Team understands the principles, want to do it their own way, but there are constraints (stemming from scaling agility to a whole organization) * Team recognizes the new way of working, but wants a solid foundation on which to inspect and adapt * Team assumes that a guidebook will be given to them and that the agile practices completely replace everything else. There will only be a few invariant across the whole agile spectrum. What you shall worry more about is when teams 'inspect and adapt' without understanding the consequences.
Get it working right as it was designed to be used and then start stretching the envelope as required. The challenge for Agile in general, is to identify a universal set of foundational ideas that are both more fundamental (described in Agile Manifesto) and more specific (Agile practices). The philosophical foundation will identify key aspects of human nature that must be served - things being talked around in the Agile community. More specific are disciplines including the best parts of Scrum and XP.Regardless of which flavor of Agile practices you explore, you need to follow Agile principle, people over process, change over documents, make continuous adjustment for your “prescriptive” agile formula, being agile rather than just doing Agile. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
January 29, 2015
Empathy as a Key Element of Digital Leadership
Empathy is about thinking as if you were in the other party's position.
Business today is overcomplex and the world becomes hyper-connected; what’re the key success factors in leadership effectiveness, and what does it mean to become an empathetic leader?
Empathy is about thinking as if you were in the other party's position. Empathy is a great leadership quality that's often overlooked. Showing empathy helps a great leader infuse their employees with the company's mission and even better, their own life purpose or career goals. Transformation is dependent on motivation...and the two feed each other in a virtuous cycle. Such soft skill that can help is the ability of a leader to communicate with empathy, that it's better to be open to new ideas and risk having failures than to be close minded and miss a brilliant idea. Frequently those brilliant ideas come from empowered knowledge workforce and empathetic leadership.
Empathy can be developed via listening and learning: Valuing people as your assets is so important. You keep your team happy and they would keep the customers happy. And sometimes the most difficult for developing leaders is the ability to listen. Giving people the time to voice an opinion or perspective is as powerful way to demonstrate your respect and build trust. Remaining calm and offering a view with perspective will make people want to engage you on any topic. The single most important soft skill is the leaders’ ability to motivate others to take a leap of faith into the unknown with them. Transformation can't happen unless and until the critical mass of knowledge workers are prepared to work in 'greyscale' and accept a large degree of unknowns. Empathy can help understand the challenges that the teams, customers and all other stakeholders face. Only when a leader motivates employees by creating an environment of risk taking and tolerance can employees take that leap of faith to achieve greatness. That 'greyscale' area is often murky, and it can be frightening.
Empathy means using the right language with the right people."Nothing in the world, in business or in life, is black and white. It could be hinting at another important skill for great leaders, which is respecting other people as if you were in their position. What you say to one person in a culture that stresses independence and individual performance, for instance, may not be as effective when speaking to a person whose culture stresses collaboration and group consensus; judging the right language to use in different situations only comes from wisdom and experience. It's not born to a leader. Empathy is a very important soft skill that is frequently undervalued. Too many business leaders have a "my way or the highway" mentality and don't value the opinions of their employees enough.
Communicating effectively at the correct time is invaluable skill for showing empathy. Communication is an important "soft skill" for leaders and managers. The ability to not simply have empathy, but to exercise and convey that in a genuine and accessible fashion. The nature of the managerial position can be isolating; but to move from manager to being an actual effective leader requires scaling that boundary and remaining closely engaged to the people who are relying on you to provide thoughtful and meaningful direction. Opening your mind to diversity of culture and opinion is extremely important in learning empathy. In today's global marketplace and interconnected world, such flexibility is becoming a necessity and even imperative.
Empathy is absolutely one of the most critical elements of digital leadership, it means an open mind to understand how others think and value; it means proactively gaining cognizance of your environment and adapt to it; it means the thoughtfulness of not only knowing what to say, what not to say, also how to say, and when to say; it means appreciating the diverse thoughts and opinions and converge them to capture the new knowledge and insight, and it helps improving leadership maturity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Business today is overcomplex and the world becomes hyper-connected; what’re the key success factors in leadership effectiveness, and what does it mean to become an empathetic leader?
Empathy is about thinking as if you were in the other party's position. Empathy is a great leadership quality that's often overlooked. Showing empathy helps a great leader infuse their employees with the company's mission and even better, their own life purpose or career goals. Transformation is dependent on motivation...and the two feed each other in a virtuous cycle. Such soft skill that can help is the ability of a leader to communicate with empathy, that it's better to be open to new ideas and risk having failures than to be close minded and miss a brilliant idea. Frequently those brilliant ideas come from empowered knowledge workforce and empathetic leadership.
Empathy can be developed via listening and learning: Valuing people as your assets is so important. You keep your team happy and they would keep the customers happy. And sometimes the most difficult for developing leaders is the ability to listen. Giving people the time to voice an opinion or perspective is as powerful way to demonstrate your respect and build trust. Remaining calm and offering a view with perspective will make people want to engage you on any topic. The single most important soft skill is the leaders’ ability to motivate others to take a leap of faith into the unknown with them. Transformation can't happen unless and until the critical mass of knowledge workers are prepared to work in 'greyscale' and accept a large degree of unknowns. Empathy can help understand the challenges that the teams, customers and all other stakeholders face. Only when a leader motivates employees by creating an environment of risk taking and tolerance can employees take that leap of faith to achieve greatness. That 'greyscale' area is often murky, and it can be frightening.
Empathy means using the right language with the right people."Nothing in the world, in business or in life, is black and white. It could be hinting at another important skill for great leaders, which is respecting other people as if you were in their position. What you say to one person in a culture that stresses independence and individual performance, for instance, may not be as effective when speaking to a person whose culture stresses collaboration and group consensus; judging the right language to use in different situations only comes from wisdom and experience. It's not born to a leader. Empathy is a very important soft skill that is frequently undervalued. Too many business leaders have a "my way or the highway" mentality and don't value the opinions of their employees enough.
Communicating effectively at the correct time is invaluable skill for showing empathy. Communication is an important "soft skill" for leaders and managers. The ability to not simply have empathy, but to exercise and convey that in a genuine and accessible fashion. The nature of the managerial position can be isolating; but to move from manager to being an actual effective leader requires scaling that boundary and remaining closely engaged to the people who are relying on you to provide thoughtful and meaningful direction. Opening your mind to diversity of culture and opinion is extremely important in learning empathy. In today's global marketplace and interconnected world, such flexibility is becoming a necessity and even imperative.
Empathy is absolutely one of the most critical elements of digital leadership, it means an open mind to understand how others think and value; it means proactively gaining cognizance of your environment and adapt to it; it means the thoughtfulness of not only knowing what to say, what not to say, also how to say, and when to say; it means appreciating the diverse thoughts and opinions and converge them to capture the new knowledge and insight, and it helps improving leadership maturity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital Master Tuning XXVI: How to Leverage Talent Analytics to Run a Smart HR?
Start with creating a data-savvy mindset in HR.
People are the most invaluable asset in businesses. however, many organizations still run their workforce management/HR department as a back office administration function, hire and fire mechanically. At the age of Big Data, how to apply talent analytics to make the right persons to the right positions and how to invest human capital to achieve its full potential and catalyze the business growth. And what’s the systematic approach in running a smart HR?
A lot has to do with creating a data-savvy mindset in HR. A lot of HR professionals are not used to applying data to support the decision-making process. Regular discussions about HR data, reports, definitions and dashboards should go along way in creating a sense of awareness. Having the data isn't worth anything if HR is not conscious enough to provide the context and interpretations of the data. Solution designing approach based on understanding the business problems will be most ideal. use available data, create a case, test the model and further refine to make it more suiting. From leadership perspective, managers need to have confidence with the data and have at least a basic understanding of where it comes from and how it is derived, they need to be comfortable with data, and have confidence in their validity and how to make evidence based decisions.
It really is going to ultimately depend on what you're looking for, the fundamental business goals. What are you trying to solve for? What metrics are important to your stakeholders? Do you want analytics (historical/current), planning (predictive), or both? What does the analytics team look like? - Figure out what your overall business objectives are ;- Figure out how HR/workforce analytics & planning align to those business objectives; - Come up with a list of requirements out of an analytics/planning system; - Figure out which, if any products out there fit those needs.
HR data should be integrated with business information: HR data has to be "interpreted" including recommendations...indeed, it is not "ideal" but critical to do so. If you are not adding value to the basic data in this way, then what are you doing? It is just like to have a computer spit out some numbers...without interpretation, "sense-making" and application of judgement within the business context, then why should you do it? What are the biggest challenges need to overcome? The biggest problems are not with IT or complexity. The biggest issues are the lack of understanding of how the business operates, lack of building the "business logic" that links the HR/Workforce data to business outcomes and the lack of an overall strategy that binds them.
Applying the right tools to solve the talent management problems you encounter. Which tools shall you select depends on your internal capacity and what you're trying to do. There are analytics tools that are strong at historical and current state analytics. Some of other tools will do the predictive/ workforce planning but generally require you to set up your own models and are not tailored to HR. These systems generally need more work than an out of the box solution, in terms of querying, building data links, setting up predictive models, etc. The other option is to go with a solution designed for workforce Analytics/ Planning. that has workforce-specific driven metrics, dashboards, and predictive capability out of the box.
Organizations are at the start of a positive shift, making data part of the conversation will invariably produce the required change over time. Reporting via dashboards has the potential for meaningful impact. It needs hard work, persistence, resilience, and a deliberate strategy to make it happen. Furthermore, you need a range of stakeholders and business processes to come together to make it happen, from senior management, to frontline managers, to HR, to IT. Overall, it is a journey, but without concerted effort and consideration of the change management issues, then a culture of data driven decision making will not just "spontaneously" appear. It needs to be embedded into the business culture - the collective mind to make effective decisions and the very habit to run a smart business.
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
People are the most invaluable asset in businesses. however, many organizations still run their workforce management/HR department as a back office administration function, hire and fire mechanically. At the age of Big Data, how to apply talent analytics to make the right persons to the right positions and how to invest human capital to achieve its full potential and catalyze the business growth. And what’s the systematic approach in running a smart HR?
A lot has to do with creating a data-savvy mindset in HR. A lot of HR professionals are not used to applying data to support the decision-making process. Regular discussions about HR data, reports, definitions and dashboards should go along way in creating a sense of awareness. Having the data isn't worth anything if HR is not conscious enough to provide the context and interpretations of the data. Solution designing approach based on understanding the business problems will be most ideal. use available data, create a case, test the model and further refine to make it more suiting. From leadership perspective, managers need to have confidence with the data and have at least a basic understanding of where it comes from and how it is derived, they need to be comfortable with data, and have confidence in their validity and how to make evidence based decisions.
It really is going to ultimately depend on what you're looking for, the fundamental business goals. What are you trying to solve for? What metrics are important to your stakeholders? Do you want analytics (historical/current), planning (predictive), or both? What does the analytics team look like? - Figure out what your overall business objectives are ;- Figure out how HR/workforce analytics & planning align to those business objectives; - Come up with a list of requirements out of an analytics/planning system; - Figure out which, if any products out there fit those needs.
HR data should be integrated with business information: HR data has to be "interpreted" including recommendations...indeed, it is not "ideal" but critical to do so. If you are not adding value to the basic data in this way, then what are you doing? It is just like to have a computer spit out some numbers...without interpretation, "sense-making" and application of judgement within the business context, then why should you do it? What are the biggest challenges need to overcome? The biggest problems are not with IT or complexity. The biggest issues are the lack of understanding of how the business operates, lack of building the "business logic" that links the HR/Workforce data to business outcomes and the lack of an overall strategy that binds them.
Applying the right tools to solve the talent management problems you encounter. Which tools shall you select depends on your internal capacity and what you're trying to do. There are analytics tools that are strong at historical and current state analytics. Some of other tools will do the predictive/ workforce planning but generally require you to set up your own models and are not tailored to HR. These systems generally need more work than an out of the box solution, in terms of querying, building data links, setting up predictive models, etc. The other option is to go with a solution designed for workforce Analytics/ Planning. that has workforce-specific driven metrics, dashboards, and predictive capability out of the box. Organizations are at the start of a positive shift, making data part of the conversation will invariably produce the required change over time. Reporting via dashboards has the potential for meaningful impact. It needs hard work, persistence, resilience, and a deliberate strategy to make it happen. Furthermore, you need a range of stakeholders and business processes to come together to make it happen, from senior management, to frontline managers, to HR, to IT. Overall, it is a journey, but without concerted effort and consideration of the change management issues, then a culture of data driven decision making will not just "spontaneously" appear. It needs to be embedded into the business culture - the collective mind to make effective decisions and the very habit to run a smart business.
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
A System Thinker’s Mind
You don't need to be a system engineer/scientist to master systems thinking; just like you don't need to be a philosopher to think philosophically.
Systems Thinking is the thinking about how things interact with one another, and get insight of the whole. As a social construction, system thinking is positive because it helps understand the links between one action, a solution, and the different behaviors it might influence. By comparing different actions, solutions together, gives you a better understanding of the potential impact of each action and helps identify the one that will have a better chance of success overall.
Systems thinking is a type of synthetic thinking with complex mix of several components; typically it includes: Dynamic thinking: positioning your issue as part of a pattern of behavior that has developed over time; Scientific thinking: using models to test hypotheses and discard falsehoods, not just to ascertain ‘the truth;’ ‘System-as-cause’ thinking: constructing a model to explain how the problem behavior arises; ‘Forest’ thinking: seeing the ‘big picture’ and taking a more holistic view of that system; ‘Operational’ thinking: analyzing how things actually work, the cause and effect relationships, and how performance is actually being generated; ‘Closed-loop’ thinking: moving away from laundry lists of exacerbating factors and describing the ‘feedback loops’ that interact to create the performance of the system; ‘Quantitative’ thinking: quantifying not just the hard data but also the soft variables that are operating in the system;
Systems thinking involves identifying systems and studying their dynamics. Systems thinking seems to catch the thinking of humans in a way that conforms as much as possible to the way nature simply unfolds - day after day after day.... Systems are alive: they come/grow, they go/deteriorate, they adapt… Understanding what is going on is one positive result -- it satisfies curiosity. When a system produces "bad" side-effects, you may wish to intervene. Understanding a system is a necessary precondition to an effective intervention. Anything else is a shot in the dark. One of the negative impacts of system thinking is associated with the rectification process. If you start thinking that a system is an object, you take away the responsibility in the creation of the social environment you live in. Perhaps the relevant social construct is the system thinkers' wish to intervene for the sake of improving situations.
A system is a dynamic series of processes whose relative nature define the emergent behavior we see...the "whole greater than the sum of its parts" concept. It is the emergent behavior of sub-systems within super systems that define the nature of the gestalic processes we see ...consciousness, social behaviors, businesses...etc. Systems Thinking, is a representation of how we see patterns in life, it is also an emergent property of the basic aspects of nature, layer on layer of systems, each with their own emergent behavior, coming together to create super systems we interact with daily. They are the interactive and layered systems that exhibit behaviors that both allow us the interaction of our minds to that of what we create with them...contributing to systems layered above us in the nature of the emergent behavior we collectively play a part of in its creation.
System thinking is an approach on how we view nature. Social constructions are by their very nature created views of reality; more for what we don't know than we do, but systems thinking, much like the scientific method, is an approach, to how we view nature. It is a tool, maybe even an algorithm of how the universe actually works. Filling in the details of course and understanding them may take life times...even nature is a social construction. Everything we can refer to is a social construction since we use social/socialized terms/sets of terms to talk about it. From such perspective, all sciences are social, since we use them to explain ourselves to environment we are into. One aspect of systems thinking is a basic understanding of differential equations. The key to a system; is the dynamic aspects of these waves, whether it is sub-nuclear patterns, or patterns layered up to the point of our consciousness and the social dynamics that are rendered from it, define the cloud of polarized waves of activity that most of us tend to reduce to static components, losing the nature of our understanding in the snapshots we think are real.
Systems thinking is nothing more than the well combination of analytic and synthetic thinking, see the trees without missing the forest; quantify not just the hard data, but also the soft variables; go beyond the surface to dig through the root cause of problem arising, and take a scientific approach to explore the nature and universe.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Systems Thinking is the thinking about how things interact with one another, and get insight of the whole. As a social construction, system thinking is positive because it helps understand the links between one action, a solution, and the different behaviors it might influence. By comparing different actions, solutions together, gives you a better understanding of the potential impact of each action and helps identify the one that will have a better chance of success overall.
Systems thinking is a type of synthetic thinking with complex mix of several components; typically it includes: Dynamic thinking: positioning your issue as part of a pattern of behavior that has developed over time; Scientific thinking: using models to test hypotheses and discard falsehoods, not just to ascertain ‘the truth;’ ‘System-as-cause’ thinking: constructing a model to explain how the problem behavior arises; ‘Forest’ thinking: seeing the ‘big picture’ and taking a more holistic view of that system; ‘Operational’ thinking: analyzing how things actually work, the cause and effect relationships, and how performance is actually being generated; ‘Closed-loop’ thinking: moving away from laundry lists of exacerbating factors and describing the ‘feedback loops’ that interact to create the performance of the system; ‘Quantitative’ thinking: quantifying not just the hard data but also the soft variables that are operating in the system;
Systems thinking involves identifying systems and studying their dynamics. Systems thinking seems to catch the thinking of humans in a way that conforms as much as possible to the way nature simply unfolds - day after day after day.... Systems are alive: they come/grow, they go/deteriorate, they adapt… Understanding what is going on is one positive result -- it satisfies curiosity. When a system produces "bad" side-effects, you may wish to intervene. Understanding a system is a necessary precondition to an effective intervention. Anything else is a shot in the dark. One of the negative impacts of system thinking is associated with the rectification process. If you start thinking that a system is an object, you take away the responsibility in the creation of the social environment you live in. Perhaps the relevant social construct is the system thinkers' wish to intervene for the sake of improving situations.
A system is a dynamic series of processes whose relative nature define the emergent behavior we see...the "whole greater than the sum of its parts" concept. It is the emergent behavior of sub-systems within super systems that define the nature of the gestalic processes we see ...consciousness, social behaviors, businesses...etc. Systems Thinking, is a representation of how we see patterns in life, it is also an emergent property of the basic aspects of nature, layer on layer of systems, each with their own emergent behavior, coming together to create super systems we interact with daily. They are the interactive and layered systems that exhibit behaviors that both allow us the interaction of our minds to that of what we create with them...contributing to systems layered above us in the nature of the emergent behavior we collectively play a part of in its creation.
System thinking is an approach on how we view nature. Social constructions are by their very nature created views of reality; more for what we don't know than we do, but systems thinking, much like the scientific method, is an approach, to how we view nature. It is a tool, maybe even an algorithm of how the universe actually works. Filling in the details of course and understanding them may take life times...even nature is a social construction. Everything we can refer to is a social construction since we use social/socialized terms/sets of terms to talk about it. From such perspective, all sciences are social, since we use them to explain ourselves to environment we are into. One aspect of systems thinking is a basic understanding of differential equations. The key to a system; is the dynamic aspects of these waves, whether it is sub-nuclear patterns, or patterns layered up to the point of our consciousness and the social dynamics that are rendered from it, define the cloud of polarized waves of activity that most of us tend to reduce to static components, losing the nature of our understanding in the snapshots we think are real.
Systems thinking is nothing more than the well combination of analytic and synthetic thinking, see the trees without missing the forest; quantify not just the hard data, but also the soft variables; go beyond the surface to dig through the root cause of problem arising, and take a scientific approach to explore the nature and universe.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
January 28, 2015
CIO as Chief Innovation Officer
Digital CIOs have the appropriate balance of technical, business/management, creativity, domain, and interpersonal skills.
Nowadays information is the lifeblood, and the emergent technology is more often the business disruptor. And due to the change nature of information & technology, IT is always in the changing environment creating unexpected situations and requiring quick and appropriate responses based on the conditions. As businesses embark on the “digital Era” of computing (Cloud, Big Data, Mobile, Social). how will IT have to change? What is the nature of the new IT leadership and what is the primary role of the CIO in harnessing the IT leadership?
CIO’s role has to shift the focus from a Chief Infrastructure Officer to a Chief Information Officer and now to be a Chief Innovation Officer. There are many roles to be served by an enterprise's IT leadership. Some of these relate to ensuring that supply-side IT management issues are handled well (building infrastructure, designing architectures, operating technical and business platforms efficiently, building the IT skill sets, etc.), others relate to demand-side IT management (building relationships with business managers and business professionals; seeding ideas for IT-enabled business strategies and innovative uses of technology; designing, building and evolving systems and platforms; project management; etc.), and yet IT also has to establish policies and enforce governance disciplines to manage enterprise wide risks & compliance, ensuring appropriate returns on technology spending and investment. A digital CIO is like a symphony conductor, who will step up to orchestrate whatever it is to be.
The IT leader of the future (and the exemplars of today) must move away from pure IT manager, and be a true business partner & strategist; especially as more and more enterprises are leveraging IT for revenue generating initiatives; what some refer to as IT "is the business". IT will not "be the business" if it does not focus on the top prioritized business initiatives. With the growth in enterprises leveraging IT for revenue generating initiatives, but IT has the history/tradition of being a very expensive cost center, often with little demonstrable value that typically misses its commitments. To improve maturity, IT organizations need to be assertive in preparing and engaging effectively and efficiently with their business partners in these strategic initiatives. As conveyed, these new initiatives cannot proceed without the appropriate operational foundation/platforms, and there will be times that you need to step back and lay the groundwork with these platforms. However, these are exciting transformational times for the IT trailblazers that are prepared to engage their business partners. Leading only with operational considerations is not the way forward. It needs to be accomplished by working with business partners to leverage opportunities for changing how the business competes in the marketplace. Business is the driving force for anything you do. No clients = no revenue = profit = no jobs = no people = no company and therefore no need to discuss IT from that perspective.
Digital CIOs have the appropriate balance of technical, business/management, creativity, domain, and interpersonal skills. IT Value comes from how the business changes what they do, that takes advantage of the applications, that run on the infrastructure. If the business does not change what they do, it just "does not matter". A Competitive edge will be geared toward responding to a market, and markets will become more diverse and complex. The CIO leader will oversee departments, because increased data will decrease the CIO's visibility, and therefore, they have to create an in-house culture, with all department heads, whistling - One mismanaged department will mismanage all departments. Hence, a digital CIO needs to have varying capabilities and thinking skills:- Critical thinking & analytical reasoning - Complex problem solving & analysis - Application of knowledge & skills in real-world settings - Location, organization, & evaluation of information from multiple sources - Innovation & creativity
CIOs needs to be technology visionary, to stay one-step ahead of the enterprise leadership team's view of IT-related priorities. The critical, continuing concerns for the collective IT leadership team are to ensure that the talent exists (internally or externally-sourced) to get things done and to fill talent gaps; to maintain an on-going awareness of what technology issues are of most importance to the enterprise leadership team and to communicate the alignment that exists between IT and these important technology issues, to fill alignment gaps, to be an enabler than just a controller. Now, no organization will have strong leaders and strong capabilities in all of these areas ... improvement programs are always underway, talent gaps constantly break out as staff leave or as the business moves in new strategic directions. The objective is to recognize what needs to be done, to assess how well things are being done, to assign and reassign priorities to what needs to be done, and to invest in improvements in mindful ways.
Develop the IT leadership capability portfolio. So, what is needed is flexibility in IT leadership (that is, ideally, an organization should develop a portfolio of IT leaders having a variety of skills with the CIO - or whatever this executive is called - both interacting with other enterprise leaders, interpreting the appropriate IT emphasis (enterprise-wide and within units) and orchestrating the full portfolio of IT leadership capability. And the most critical IT emphasis for any organization (value innovation, operational excellence, architectural flexibility, etc.) changes over time and varies by organizational unit. And, these 'most critical' IT capabilities are not the same across an enterprise (today’s value innovation might be most crucial for some units but operational excellence might be most crucial for other units ... depending on each unit's situation and strategic emphasis). So, an innovative IT organization has to continuously take initiatives to improve business processes or delight customers.
What then is the future role of the CIO? Besides being a Chief Innovation Officer -catalyzing business growth; he/she also needs to become Chief Interaction Officer - building relationships across the enterprise leadership team, key customer executives, key vendor executives, and the IT leadership team; build an effective IT leadership team whose capabilities align with the current enterprise IT posture with envisioned future enterprise IT postures; Chief Integration Officer-work with the enterprise leadership team to fabricate incentive systems for the IT leadership team such that IT leaders will be rewarded for behaving in enterprise-benefiting ways; work with the enterprise leadership team to integrate governance structures and processes to ensure the right people make the right critical IT-related decisions following the right criteria; and, Chief Improvement officer- measurement systems for assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of IT services (broadly construed) and for communicating IT services effectiveness and efficiency to enterprise leaders, etc. Last but not least, CIO is the leadership role, digital CIOs always need to be a Chief Influence Officer - make positive influence in their organizations and our society.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Nowadays information is the lifeblood, and the emergent technology is more often the business disruptor. And due to the change nature of information & technology, IT is always in the changing environment creating unexpected situations and requiring quick and appropriate responses based on the conditions. As businesses embark on the “digital Era” of computing (Cloud, Big Data, Mobile, Social). how will IT have to change? What is the nature of the new IT leadership and what is the primary role of the CIO in harnessing the IT leadership? CIO’s role has to shift the focus from a Chief Infrastructure Officer to a Chief Information Officer and now to be a Chief Innovation Officer. There are many roles to be served by an enterprise's IT leadership. Some of these relate to ensuring that supply-side IT management issues are handled well (building infrastructure, designing architectures, operating technical and business platforms efficiently, building the IT skill sets, etc.), others relate to demand-side IT management (building relationships with business managers and business professionals; seeding ideas for IT-enabled business strategies and innovative uses of technology; designing, building and evolving systems and platforms; project management; etc.), and yet IT also has to establish policies and enforce governance disciplines to manage enterprise wide risks & compliance, ensuring appropriate returns on technology spending and investment. A digital CIO is like a symphony conductor, who will step up to orchestrate whatever it is to be.
The IT leader of the future (and the exemplars of today) must move away from pure IT manager, and be a true business partner & strategist; especially as more and more enterprises are leveraging IT for revenue generating initiatives; what some refer to as IT "is the business". IT will not "be the business" if it does not focus on the top prioritized business initiatives. With the growth in enterprises leveraging IT for revenue generating initiatives, but IT has the history/tradition of being a very expensive cost center, often with little demonstrable value that typically misses its commitments. To improve maturity, IT organizations need to be assertive in preparing and engaging effectively and efficiently with their business partners in these strategic initiatives. As conveyed, these new initiatives cannot proceed without the appropriate operational foundation/platforms, and there will be times that you need to step back and lay the groundwork with these platforms. However, these are exciting transformational times for the IT trailblazers that are prepared to engage their business partners. Leading only with operational considerations is not the way forward. It needs to be accomplished by working with business partners to leverage opportunities for changing how the business competes in the marketplace. Business is the driving force for anything you do. No clients = no revenue = profit = no jobs = no people = no company and therefore no need to discuss IT from that perspective.
Digital CIOs have the appropriate balance of technical, business/management, creativity, domain, and interpersonal skills. IT Value comes from how the business changes what they do, that takes advantage of the applications, that run on the infrastructure. If the business does not change what they do, it just "does not matter". A Competitive edge will be geared toward responding to a market, and markets will become more diverse and complex. The CIO leader will oversee departments, because increased data will decrease the CIO's visibility, and therefore, they have to create an in-house culture, with all department heads, whistling - One mismanaged department will mismanage all departments. Hence, a digital CIO needs to have varying capabilities and thinking skills:- Critical thinking & analytical reasoning - Complex problem solving & analysis - Application of knowledge & skills in real-world settings - Location, organization, & evaluation of information from multiple sources - Innovation & creativity
CIOs needs to be technology visionary, to stay one-step ahead of the enterprise leadership team's view of IT-related priorities. The critical, continuing concerns for the collective IT leadership team are to ensure that the talent exists (internally or externally-sourced) to get things done and to fill talent gaps; to maintain an on-going awareness of what technology issues are of most importance to the enterprise leadership team and to communicate the alignment that exists between IT and these important technology issues, to fill alignment gaps, to be an enabler than just a controller. Now, no organization will have strong leaders and strong capabilities in all of these areas ... improvement programs are always underway, talent gaps constantly break out as staff leave or as the business moves in new strategic directions. The objective is to recognize what needs to be done, to assess how well things are being done, to assign and reassign priorities to what needs to be done, and to invest in improvements in mindful ways.
Develop the IT leadership capability portfolio. So, what is needed is flexibility in IT leadership (that is, ideally, an organization should develop a portfolio of IT leaders having a variety of skills with the CIO - or whatever this executive is called - both interacting with other enterprise leaders, interpreting the appropriate IT emphasis (enterprise-wide and within units) and orchestrating the full portfolio of IT leadership capability. And the most critical IT emphasis for any organization (value innovation, operational excellence, architectural flexibility, etc.) changes over time and varies by organizational unit. And, these 'most critical' IT capabilities are not the same across an enterprise (today’s value innovation might be most crucial for some units but operational excellence might be most crucial for other units ... depending on each unit's situation and strategic emphasis). So, an innovative IT organization has to continuously take initiatives to improve business processes or delight customers.
What then is the future role of the CIO? Besides being a Chief Innovation Officer -catalyzing business growth; he/she also needs to become Chief Interaction Officer - building relationships across the enterprise leadership team, key customer executives, key vendor executives, and the IT leadership team; build an effective IT leadership team whose capabilities align with the current enterprise IT posture with envisioned future enterprise IT postures; Chief Integration Officer-work with the enterprise leadership team to fabricate incentive systems for the IT leadership team such that IT leaders will be rewarded for behaving in enterprise-benefiting ways; work with the enterprise leadership team to integrate governance structures and processes to ensure the right people make the right critical IT-related decisions following the right criteria; and, Chief Improvement officer- measurement systems for assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of IT services (broadly construed) and for communicating IT services effectiveness and efficiency to enterprise leaders, etc. Last but not least, CIO is the leadership role, digital CIOs always need to be a Chief Influence Officer - make positive influence in their organizations and our society. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital Master Tuning XXV: How to Improve Leadership Qualities
Sum up the high quality leader - being great in Attitude, Aptitude and Altitude.
Business and the world becomes over-complex and hyperconnected, leadership effectiveness and qualities needs to be assessed within the context of the organization, not as a stand-alone program. Day by day should be assessed via mind shift - how do they think; positive influence - how do they lead, competence - how do they cultivate capabilities, performance - how do they make continuous delivery, potential - how do they learn & grow, business results - how do they contribute to their business's long term success, and cultural evolution - how do they walk the talk - be the change agent themselves and ultimate digital masters.
Leadership must be anchored to a full professionalism; also made of personal qualities such as, independent judgment, critical thinking, professionalism and sense of responsibility and balance through which it becomes possible to earn the role of trust and guiding the organization in which they work, the respect and trust of others. and become a value constructor: These are the qualities essential to improve the quality of people's lives and the future of organizations.
Leadership must embrace the multi-dimensional intelligence or ultimate wisdom: The multi-functionality needed today to leaders imposes modern professionals more flexible, less tied to standards. One of the biggest challenges in this complex, multi-polar world is the fact that we need different perspectives, different knowledge and different ways to solve a problem. Sometimes there is not "one" answer: there are some, or many: that is why what is first of all needed is to think as a team. The high quality leadership has the very characteristics such as multi-dimensional intelligence and wisdom.
The principles of developing as a leader is a continuous process. Improvement of oneself does not only happen in just one day. Every Day you will learn new things and new styles. Becoming a leader is about being a better person, being committed, to yourself, others, growth, and finding that passion to improve every day. Self-fulfillment, well-being and satisfaction become the goals of a genuine positive leadership; that on these coordinates must measure itself in terms of quality -efficiency and effectiveness; agility and maturity. To the leader is given the responsibility and the privilege to be real, true pioneers, which mind all sorts of gaps. But to be so, they have to think and develop an innovative model of productive governance, train their followers as new leaders, listen to their customers as genuine buyers of their work.
Summing up the high quality leader -Being great in Attitude, Aptitude and Altitude -a winning mixture composed of character, intelligence and competence in a humble frame of self-esteem which makes aware of his/her quality without needing to show them. Among the primary tasks of a leader, there is certainly also that to promote the renewal, the generational change. Be aware of the role of change agent as a leader, proactively cultivate the qualities:-Self awareness and a desire for constant self improvement -A clear vision, -Being a creative communicator.-Having first rate emotional intelligence -Make effective decision, no procrastination
The leadership of the future must become aware of its own resources, being open to new ideas and input from others is a key skill for any leaders to achieve behavioral strategies effective and have a path of personal and professional improvement. A great preparation, vision, intuition, perseverance and the ability to work hard. But, above all, don't be afraid to take risks and make mistakes, but fail forward to learn with agility.
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
Business and the world becomes over-complex and hyperconnected, leadership effectiveness and qualities needs to be assessed within the context of the organization, not as a stand-alone program. Day by day should be assessed via mind shift - how do they think; positive influence - how do they lead, competence - how do they cultivate capabilities, performance - how do they make continuous delivery, potential - how do they learn & grow, business results - how do they contribute to their business's long term success, and cultural evolution - how do they walk the talk - be the change agent themselves and ultimate digital masters.
Leadership must be anchored to a full professionalism; also made of personal qualities such as, independent judgment, critical thinking, professionalism and sense of responsibility and balance through which it becomes possible to earn the role of trust and guiding the organization in which they work, the respect and trust of others. and become a value constructor: These are the qualities essential to improve the quality of people's lives and the future of organizations.
Leadership must embrace the multi-dimensional intelligence or ultimate wisdom: The multi-functionality needed today to leaders imposes modern professionals more flexible, less tied to standards. One of the biggest challenges in this complex, multi-polar world is the fact that we need different perspectives, different knowledge and different ways to solve a problem. Sometimes there is not "one" answer: there are some, or many: that is why what is first of all needed is to think as a team. The high quality leadership has the very characteristics such as multi-dimensional intelligence and wisdom.
The principles of developing as a leader is a continuous process. Improvement of oneself does not only happen in just one day. Every Day you will learn new things and new styles. Becoming a leader is about being a better person, being committed, to yourself, others, growth, and finding that passion to improve every day. Self-fulfillment, well-being and satisfaction become the goals of a genuine positive leadership; that on these coordinates must measure itself in terms of quality -efficiency and effectiveness; agility and maturity. To the leader is given the responsibility and the privilege to be real, true pioneers, which mind all sorts of gaps. But to be so, they have to think and develop an innovative model of productive governance, train their followers as new leaders, listen to their customers as genuine buyers of their work.
Summing up the high quality leader -Being great in Attitude, Aptitude and Altitude -a winning mixture composed of character, intelligence and competence in a humble frame of self-esteem which makes aware of his/her quality without needing to show them. Among the primary tasks of a leader, there is certainly also that to promote the renewal, the generational change. Be aware of the role of change agent as a leader, proactively cultivate the qualities:-Self awareness and a desire for constant self improvement -A clear vision, -Being a creative communicator.-Having first rate emotional intelligence -Make effective decision, no procrastination
The leadership of the future must become aware of its own resources, being open to new ideas and input from others is a key skill for any leaders to achieve behavioral strategies effective and have a path of personal and professional improvement. A great preparation, vision, intuition, perseverance and the ability to work hard. But, above all, don't be afraid to take risks and make mistakes, but fail forward to learn with agility.
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
The Best indicator of Business Readiness to be more Agile
So the move to agile needs to be agile itself.
Each organization is different, there are various characteristics make or break agile adoption at an organization, but those that successfully transition to being more Agile probably share similar characteristics. What are the best indicator of business readiness to be more Agile?
C-level support affects many aspects. Awareness of agile (or lack of it) at the top does matter a lot. No matter what happens or desire at other levels, without C-level blessings, any attempt at aligning the projects with agile values turns out to be a waste of time and resources. Being Agile can't happen in isolation of other corporate processes (funding & financial, HR hiring, talent and & performance management; etc.). And it's likely the legacy processes don't support doing work differently and have to be addressed. Changes to the legacy processes need C-level support, otherwise, teams feel like they're running into bureaucratic obstacles and get discouraged because being Agile appears too difficult. And, the recognition C-level executives give for great results related to being Agile really fuel the teams and organizations! The ability for upper management/executives to clearly state what they believe agile will do for an organization and deciding how they will measure its success. Unfortunately, many upper management don't even have proper understanding of what an "agile" environment means to them other than getting things done faster !
Communication is at the heart of building a better, more trusting relationship. Without it, it's hard to see how teams could be successful. If management doesn't trust the people they hired to come up with solutions and do the job right, then management shouldn't have hired them. If management does trust its employees, then let them do their jobs. There shouldn't be much need to "manage" people. The main goal of Agile is to manage changes, and the best way to do that is to improve the communication. All others points of Agile are great improvements, but this is the principle. Managers and executives have to serve and lead, and the traditional management paradigm needs to shift 180 degrees; leadership teams have to trust and support teams, and remove organizational impediments. They need to empower teams and individuals that are closest to the 'problem' to make the right decisions, and ensure that those decision makers have everything they need to implement. The truly trusting relationship can overcome the fears:-Fear of making an estimate and having it turned into a commitment. -Fear of pursuing a solution and finding out it doesn’t work. -Fear of starting something without having all the facts. -Fear that mistakes are punished. -Fear that discoveries will be treated as failures to foresee events. -Fear that all the work will not get done if you don’t force it into the current release.
Clearly a strong IT / business relationship matters. So, if the IT teams are really interested in being Agile, then the grassroots desire is the most important attribute to drive Agile acceptance. As IT works on projects, it can start to implement Agile practices: getting more frequent communication with the business during discovery and development, daily standups, frequent releases of high value features, etc. As the business realizes they are getting valuable features from IT at a faster pace, and those features are exactly what they wanted (since they are more touchpoints during development), they will come to see the value of Agile and support it more.
Crisis is a catalyst for change. Complacency with the status quo and statements like 'it's not broken so don't try to fix," it'll signal roadblocks ahead for trying to implement new ways of working. If it is acknowledged at board level that the existing delivery mechanism is considered to be fundamentally broken or there has been a major delivery disaster (or more often - no delivery at all), then the organization may be ready to consider a major change. Without this 'crisis' there is often not the urgency or commitment for change. However, crisis can imply an expectation of a quick fix to alleviate the crisis rather than careful evaluation of why existing processes don't support growth. Implementing Agile in a "crisis mode" is probably a formula for failure. Instead consider positioning agile as a way of helping the business meet its objectives. Every business wants to increase sales, revenue, etc. Show how implementing Agile will help meet those long term business goals by providing valuable features faster than current processes.
So the move to agile needs to be agile itself. Simply because every organization is different, it has different challenges and has a different ability to absorb learning and change and different resistors. The organization needs to be willing to invest in learning from failure, as at times things will progress. The ability to clearly state what you believe agile will do for your organization and deciding how you will measure its success. Moving to Agile should be business driven. It is organizational change and organizational change has low success rate and needs a strategy and close inspection and adaptation.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
January 27, 2015
Digital Master Tuning XXIIII : How to Enforce Performance Accountability
Accountability goes hand in hand with delegation of authority or power.
Digital transformation is all about shaping highly performing and highly innovative organizations (Digital Master) to improve efficiency & effectiveness; agility and maturity. In detail, how do you drive workforce performance, whilst generating accountability for that performance?Accountability goes hand in hand with delegation of authority or power. Accountability is a part of the personal integrity. If you ensure the individuals have the autonomy within their tasks or projects you will be able to address performance on an equal partnership bases. It seems simple, but it has many different additional advantages encouraging knowledge transfer within the team, engagement and so on. It’s easier at least to recognize and award it wherever put in place effectively to generate some good result. One must take the long view and may require a core DNA transplant. Designing a performance management system that makes sense for your company depends on many factors, including the nature of your business, your company culture and your mission. At its core, performance management is about creating a work environment that helps your company meet its business goals. It's more than just a collection of tools and processes, although there are many that can help you meet your goals. It's a philosophy that informs everything you do. When everyone has the same vision, when everyone is treated as a "partner", when communication flows top to bottom and bottom to top, when people no longer say I have a job but a purpose, when management is agile and leadership is about people, and when individuals/teams/ departments are taught to solve daily operational problems, when people can "become brilliant on the basics" and when everyone understands how the business operates - then you will see a workplace with respect, genuine engagement, mutual understanding, trust,optimism, and absolutely the best customer experience management - that is the digital competency. A process mechanism could be put in place to understand what flaws are in place, impeding a good performance and its improvement. Then identifying for each and any of these main key impediments a pragmatic solution. Identified a list of them from organizational, process/ procedure, people, leadership sides. Just as an example from people side: lack of workforce flexibility (both attitude or know how); interpersonal relationship drift/ issues; aging of know how, experience, position-talent match; engagement trends. Set clear expectations, provide thorough training, track errors, (and retraining when necessary), and reward success.
Performance rises on many fronts based on managers and leaders being on the same page; of course both of these groups need to buy in to high performance culture as well, and doing several things consistently. there is no single initiative or program or "theme for the year" that will suffice to raise the performance of a company or business unit. For example, you cannot command innovation and adaptation but you can enable, encourage, inspire and even lead. Also, you can't command someone to be creative or adaptive. People must have other intangible performance drivers that get them out of bed each morning and motivate them with ambition and creativity.
Behaving in a trustworthy manner is crucial as well. Using the forces of respect for every employee, versus fear and punishment. Belief in the high value of both TEAM and EACH PERSON, and profits and performance. This is the long view and takes some courage and faith to develop...but it ultimately releases the highest potential of each employee. Allowing for personal traits that will vary both among the person who delegates and the person delegated to, there are some structural issues with accountability. If one is to hold another accountable (peer or subordinate) for achieving some result, there is a set of conditions that must be fulfilled in advance on the "receiver" side. Among them - that person must a) be reasonably known to possess the skill/talent needed, b) be provided with the tools and resources necessary to succeed, c) have "during the duration" access to responsive up/down communication, and more. Holding someone accountable is not the same as someone taking responsibility.
Rewards systems are put in place and rewards that are tailored to the individual instead of one-size-fits-all. You can't "drive" performance without mutually accepted goals and expectations. It's almost impossible to measure performance objectively but goals and expectations help. It’s important to tie individual performance in the company to company profits and also company rewards and at the same time had individual performance incentives which were measured against personal goals. This kept all employees working together while at the same time pushed the individual to exceed their personal goals. It was a win win. One of the "obstacles" is not having the same rules for accountability apply everywhere. Recognizing your performers and keeping them motivated along with keeping the average and bottom box performers on toes are two leadership styles you will have to maintain simultaneously.
Digital organizations are flatter, with an “every individual as a stakeholder” culture, through cross-functional collaboration, open door listening, transparency ("we have a problem to solve together") and mutual sharing in successes, the performance accountability can be harnessed via motivating your employees to achieve high than expected result.
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 transformation is all about shaping highly performing and highly innovative organizations (Digital Master) to improve efficiency & effectiveness; agility and maturity. In detail, how do you drive workforce performance, whilst generating accountability for that performance?Accountability goes hand in hand with delegation of authority or power. Accountability is a part of the personal integrity. If you ensure the individuals have the autonomy within their tasks or projects you will be able to address performance on an equal partnership bases. It seems simple, but it has many different additional advantages encouraging knowledge transfer within the team, engagement and so on. It’s easier at least to recognize and award it wherever put in place effectively to generate some good result. One must take the long view and may require a core DNA transplant. Designing a performance management system that makes sense for your company depends on many factors, including the nature of your business, your company culture and your mission. At its core, performance management is about creating a work environment that helps your company meet its business goals. It's more than just a collection of tools and processes, although there are many that can help you meet your goals. It's a philosophy that informs everything you do. When everyone has the same vision, when everyone is treated as a "partner", when communication flows top to bottom and bottom to top, when people no longer say I have a job but a purpose, when management is agile and leadership is about people, and when individuals/teams/ departments are taught to solve daily operational problems, when people can "become brilliant on the basics" and when everyone understands how the business operates - then you will see a workplace with respect, genuine engagement, mutual understanding, trust,optimism, and absolutely the best customer experience management - that is the digital competency. A process mechanism could be put in place to understand what flaws are in place, impeding a good performance and its improvement. Then identifying for each and any of these main key impediments a pragmatic solution. Identified a list of them from organizational, process/ procedure, people, leadership sides. Just as an example from people side: lack of workforce flexibility (both attitude or know how); interpersonal relationship drift/ issues; aging of know how, experience, position-talent match; engagement trends. Set clear expectations, provide thorough training, track errors, (and retraining when necessary), and reward success.
Performance rises on many fronts based on managers and leaders being on the same page; of course both of these groups need to buy in to high performance culture as well, and doing several things consistently. there is no single initiative or program or "theme for the year" that will suffice to raise the performance of a company or business unit. For example, you cannot command innovation and adaptation but you can enable, encourage, inspire and even lead. Also, you can't command someone to be creative or adaptive. People must have other intangible performance drivers that get them out of bed each morning and motivate them with ambition and creativity.
Behaving in a trustworthy manner is crucial as well. Using the forces of respect for every employee, versus fear and punishment. Belief in the high value of both TEAM and EACH PERSON, and profits and performance. This is the long view and takes some courage and faith to develop...but it ultimately releases the highest potential of each employee. Allowing for personal traits that will vary both among the person who delegates and the person delegated to, there are some structural issues with accountability. If one is to hold another accountable (peer or subordinate) for achieving some result, there is a set of conditions that must be fulfilled in advance on the "receiver" side. Among them - that person must a) be reasonably known to possess the skill/talent needed, b) be provided with the tools and resources necessary to succeed, c) have "during the duration" access to responsive up/down communication, and more. Holding someone accountable is not the same as someone taking responsibility.
Rewards systems are put in place and rewards that are tailored to the individual instead of one-size-fits-all. You can't "drive" performance without mutually accepted goals and expectations. It's almost impossible to measure performance objectively but goals and expectations help. It’s important to tie individual performance in the company to company profits and also company rewards and at the same time had individual performance incentives which were measured against personal goals. This kept all employees working together while at the same time pushed the individual to exceed their personal goals. It was a win win. One of the "obstacles" is not having the same rules for accountability apply everywhere. Recognizing your performers and keeping them motivated along with keeping the average and bottom box performers on toes are two leadership styles you will have to maintain simultaneously.Digital organizations are flatter, with an “every individual as a stakeholder” culture, through cross-functional collaboration, open door listening, transparency ("we have a problem to solve together") and mutual sharing in successes, the performance accountability can be harnessed via motivating your employees to achieve high than expected result.
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
Five Key Elements in Digital Leadership
Digital Leadership is Profound, Positive and Innovative.
With many organizations and the society as a whole reach the inflection point of digital transformation, as always, the spirit comes from the top, leadership is a key success factor for any organization's success. Due to the complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and volatility of digital age, the leadership in any organization must have the ability to guide, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals; what are the most critical elements in digital leadership though?
Vision: Leadership is the foresight to see the future needs of an organization, the commitment to provide whatever effort is necessary to move the organization in the right direction and the grace to do so because it is best for the organization. It is more crucial for leadership today due to the rapidly changes and VUCA nature of digital age.
Creativity: Creativity is emerged as one of the most critical factors of digital leadership; which is often motivated by curiosity, be curious to discover the new way to do things. Creative leadership avoids unnecessary process and hierarchy. Good leadership sees how bureaucracy can stiffen innovation, strangle understanding, process and action.
Empathy: Listening, challenging and concluding positively in terms that the individual / audience understood, at any level of the organization; knowing his/her team upon strengths, weaknesses, goals and objectives. Ability to see and treat people as people, not as objects. Many of people unknowingly work and live within their own boxes and often times fail to see co-workers, bosses and subordinates as people but objects, and in doing so fail to see and hear their viewpoints which clouds the judgment as leaders. In broader scope, today’s global leaders must understand multiple culture, multiple view of point, moving leadership from apathy to sympathy to empathy.
Collaboration: Collaboration is imperative. Leaders need to inspire others to want to work together to deliver on the goals. Leadership is about collaboration, fostering an environment where creating success together has greater rewards than individual performance. Leadership is getting other people to do what you want them to do, because they want to do it. A leader is able to inspire best-ever individual and team performance in support of the organizational mission, while ensuring that each member of the community has the support, resources, and guidance to succeed. Leadership is the capacity to manage volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous situations in order to create commons to address challenges.
Wisdom: Only wisdom can transcend leadership from good to great. The significant tasks of leaders are making decisions, wisdom has to do with soundness of judgment. Wisdom mainly consists of having experience and yet knowing when to discard that experience, when you come across new knowledge - new frontiers to existing knowledge. Wisdom is a full set of learning, unlearning and relearning. Plus an open mind -wisdom is a function of knowing what you don't know, and keeps curiosity to know more.
Sometimes leadership is at the front, sometimes it is from behind - depends on what is required by the circumstance. Surely digital leadership is profund with such five key elements, and beyond, integrity, consistency, perseverance, character, forthrightness, enthusiasm, attitude, knowledge, industriousness, etc, for all values. We all respect things which reflect the highest standards of values and want more of them and disrespect things which reflect their opposites, leadership is a journey, and digital leaders are the forerunner of digital transformation.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
With many organizations and the society as a whole reach the inflection point of digital transformation, as always, the spirit comes from the top, leadership is a key success factor for any organization's success. Due to the complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and volatility of digital age, the leadership in any organization must have the ability to guide, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals; what are the most critical elements in digital leadership though?
Vision: Leadership is the foresight to see the future needs of an organization, the commitment to provide whatever effort is necessary to move the organization in the right direction and the grace to do so because it is best for the organization. It is more crucial for leadership today due to the rapidly changes and VUCA nature of digital age.
Creativity: Creativity is emerged as one of the most critical factors of digital leadership; which is often motivated by curiosity, be curious to discover the new way to do things. Creative leadership avoids unnecessary process and hierarchy. Good leadership sees how bureaucracy can stiffen innovation, strangle understanding, process and action.
Empathy: Listening, challenging and concluding positively in terms that the individual / audience understood, at any level of the organization; knowing his/her team upon strengths, weaknesses, goals and objectives. Ability to see and treat people as people, not as objects. Many of people unknowingly work and live within their own boxes and often times fail to see co-workers, bosses and subordinates as people but objects, and in doing so fail to see and hear their viewpoints which clouds the judgment as leaders. In broader scope, today’s global leaders must understand multiple culture, multiple view of point, moving leadership from apathy to sympathy to empathy.
Collaboration: Collaboration is imperative. Leaders need to inspire others to want to work together to deliver on the goals. Leadership is about collaboration, fostering an environment where creating success together has greater rewards than individual performance. Leadership is getting other people to do what you want them to do, because they want to do it. A leader is able to inspire best-ever individual and team performance in support of the organizational mission, while ensuring that each member of the community has the support, resources, and guidance to succeed. Leadership is the capacity to manage volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous situations in order to create commons to address challenges.
Wisdom: Only wisdom can transcend leadership from good to great. The significant tasks of leaders are making decisions, wisdom has to do with soundness of judgment. Wisdom mainly consists of having experience and yet knowing when to discard that experience, when you come across new knowledge - new frontiers to existing knowledge. Wisdom is a full set of learning, unlearning and relearning. Plus an open mind -wisdom is a function of knowing what you don't know, and keeps curiosity to know more.
Sometimes leadership is at the front, sometimes it is from behind - depends on what is required by the circumstance. Surely digital leadership is profund with such five key elements, and beyond, integrity, consistency, perseverance, character, forthrightness, enthusiasm, attitude, knowledge, industriousness, etc, for all values. We all respect things which reflect the highest standards of values and want more of them and disrespect things which reflect their opposites, leadership is a journey, and digital leaders are the forerunner of digital transformation.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
