Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1463
January 4, 2015
Digital Master Tuning II: Future of Digital Organization
Digital transformation is a journey, from digital strategy crafting to digital organizational structure tuning, it has to permeate into business vision and strategy, mind-set and action, culture and communication, process and capability, etc. From Organization Design (OD) perspective, what’re the characteristics of a digital organization, and how to improve its maturity?Diagnose the root cause of employee disengagement. Statistically, more than two third of employees do not engage in the work they do. OD could regain some of the reputation it once had if they focused more on the root causes that employees are not engaged fully and not spend so much time chasing and trying to treat the symptoms. This requires that you start with a complete and accurate diagnosis of the organization's current state, identifying any barriers to excellence that may exist, then developing strategies for lowering or removing those barriers. In my opinion, this diagnostic shortcoming is where most OD processes get off to a poor start.Improve business effectiveness and agility. Digital is the age of empathy. OD shall help organizations get more effective and agile by providing an environment within which employees at all levels are inspired and allowed to commit their best in the organization's service. This is definitely a leadership challenge because effective leaders inspire that commitment habitually. However, more often, leadership of that ilk is in short supply. Very few of them understand all the gains they will enjoy from such initiatives in their organizations. Gains like profitability, agility, new learning, revenue growth and market expansion. Gains in culture change (adaptability and responsiveness), in innovation rate and employee retention for a second level of gainsWell mix the physical and virtual team to build digital hybrid organization. Many 'classic' organizations and managers can be presence based, you can only do your job if you're physically here. The digital technologies such as enterprise social platform provide unprecedented opportunity for cross-functional and cross-geographic communication and collaboration, and the job is not the place you go, but the work you accomplished. It is when 'newer' employees increase engagement when they feel trusted to get the job done...when and where they think is most productive and opportune. Build the culture of innovation and bridge the generational difference: The traditional leaders expect loyalty, digital workers demand engagement. The traditional leaders view performance from a behavioral compliance to norms world, digital professionals view performance as largely knowledge based, particular to capability builder. Culture is the collective behavior, the behaviour change comes first; right at the top-reward the team and innovate initiatives. And then remove the fear of the unknown as they go towards implementation (and there are many unknowns on this journey); Do the right things before doing things right. OD is part of digital strategy because the characteristics of digital world is complex, uncertainty, and unknowns are common place, you just have to prepare for the different scenario. One shouldn’t think strategy is easy. If you don't take the time and make the effort to get the strategy right, you could end up "doing to the wrong things right." Digital is all about the accelerated speed of changes, time horizons and speed are killing organizations today. "Hit the ground running" is the mantra. Hence, strategy-execution is the iterative continuum, not just the linear steps. Visionary and motivational leaders are on demand: Low motivation leads to low commitment. To be an effective leader and see positive results, you must be invested, empowering and motivated yourself, if you plan to motivate others...rather than ignoring an employees growth, potential or pointing out their areas of weakness, offer tailored training and encouragement, catch them doing something right... well align employees’ talent with business’s differentiated capabilities, continue to unleash the potential of your employees and ultimately drive business’s long term prosperity.
In Digital Master, we sum up the 9 types of high mature digital organizations which present the unique organizational traits and value added characteristics, you can try this fun quiz and gain more knowledge and insight via it. http://www.slideshare.net/pearl2011/d... masters are chasing the special digital charm, what is it? A: Profit
B: Wisdom
C: Hail
D: Intelligence
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Introduction URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTubeFollow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
New Year Book Debut: Digital Master Tuning I
Go Digital, like a Pro!
Digital Master is only a click away now, yes, it is not a holiday entertaining book, but if you would like to do some holiday mind crafting, exercise strategic muscles to keep digital fit; go beyond the surface to capture multi-dimensional insight and digital foresight, then, you shall get this book, for new year brainstorming. It is:
A Guide Book to Debunk the Myths of Enterprise Digital Maturity;A Bridge Book to Mind Industrial era and Digital Era;A Play Book to Shape Game-changing Digital MindsetsA Framework to Orchestrate Dynamic Digital Capabilities.An Ongoing Book to write the new chapter of Digital Innovation.
1. Who are the audience of Digital Master?
“The primary attribute of Digital Master is its ability to appeal to all level of business reader. Most such books on the topic narrow the focus to a specific segment of business pursuit (commonly, marketing or branding) or a specific audience (typically managers or entrepreneurs). It's rare to see a book that seeks and promotes inclusion at all business levels and is directed not just to leaders, but to workers.” - MidWest Digital Review
Every generation has its own revolution -now we are all C-Gen: the Connected Digital Generation. Every digital professional and every organization has the opportunity to become a Digital Master; No matter you are Greatest Gen, Boomer, X Gen, Y Gen, Z Gen digital professional; or which continent you reside in, what industry you work for; or which stage of life you experience, there are universal principles to shape the digital mindset, sharpen multi-dimensional digital visions, cultivate the culture of innovation, to become the digital ninja and master the digital flow more effortlessly.
2. What is Digital Master all about?
It is neither a digital encyclopedia nor a digital entertainment book, but a framework and play book to connect digital dots and bridge the difference between information age and digital era; between business and technology; between local and globe; between silo and holism; between now and future. It is also a digital playbook to instruct digital professionals to shape game-changing mindset in order to compete for the future.
Yes, it is a book with more than 430 pages, reading it is more like to drink a cup of coffee or tea, you need to sip carefully, do not just swallow it in the holiday season, but use it as a guide book to navigate your digital journey in 2015 and beyond.
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Introduction URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTubeFollow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital Master is only a click away now, yes, it is not a holiday entertaining book, but if you would like to do some holiday mind crafting, exercise strategic muscles to keep digital fit; go beyond the surface to capture multi-dimensional insight and digital foresight, then, you shall get this book, for new year brainstorming. It is:
A Guide Book to Debunk the Myths of Enterprise Digital Maturity;A Bridge Book to Mind Industrial era and Digital Era;A Play Book to Shape Game-changing Digital MindsetsA Framework to Orchestrate Dynamic Digital Capabilities.An Ongoing Book to write the new chapter of Digital Innovation.
1. Who are the audience of Digital Master?
“The primary attribute of Digital Master is its ability to appeal to all level of business reader. Most such books on the topic narrow the focus to a specific segment of business pursuit (commonly, marketing or branding) or a specific audience (typically managers or entrepreneurs). It's rare to see a book that seeks and promotes inclusion at all business levels and is directed not just to leaders, but to workers.” - MidWest Digital Review
Every generation has its own revolution -now we are all C-Gen: the Connected Digital Generation. Every digital professional and every organization has the opportunity to become a Digital Master; No matter you are Greatest Gen, Boomer, X Gen, Y Gen, Z Gen digital professional; or which continent you reside in, what industry you work for; or which stage of life you experience, there are universal principles to shape the digital mindset, sharpen multi-dimensional digital visions, cultivate the culture of innovation, to become the digital ninja and master the digital flow more effortlessly.
2. What is Digital Master all about?
It is neither a digital encyclopedia nor a digital entertainment book, but a framework and play book to connect digital dots and bridge the difference between information age and digital era; between business and technology; between local and globe; between silo and holism; between now and future. It is also a digital playbook to instruct digital professionals to shape game-changing mindset in order to compete for the future.
Yes, it is a book with more than 430 pages, reading it is more like to drink a cup of coffee or tea, you need to sip carefully, do not just swallow it in the holiday season, but use it as a guide book to navigate your digital journey in 2015 and beyond.
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Introduction URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTubeFollow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
New Year Book Debut: Digital Master Introduction Series I
Go Digital, like a Pro!
Digital Master is only a click away now, yes, it is not a holiday entertaining book, but if you would like to do some holiday mind crafting, exercise strategic muscles to keep digital fit; go beyond the surface to capture multi-dimensional insight and digital foresight, then, you shall get this book, for new year brainstorming. It is:
A Guide Book to Debunk the Myths of Enterprise Digital Maturity;A Bridge Book to Mind Industrial era and Digital Era;A Play Book to Shape Game-changing Digital MindsetsA Framework to Orchestrate Dynamic Digital Capabilities.An Ongoing Book to write the new chapter of Digital Innovation.
1. Who are the audience of Digital Master?
“The primary attribute of Digital Master is its ability to appeal to all level of business reader. Most such books on the topic narrow the focus to a specific segment of business pursuit (commonly, marketing or branding) or a specific audience (typically managers or entrepreneurs). It's rare to see a book that seeks and promotes inclusion at all business levels and is directed not just to leaders, but to workers.” - MidWest Digital Review
Every generation has its own revolution -now we are all C-Gen: the Connected Digital Generation. Every digital professional and every organization has the opportunity to become a Digital Master; No matter you are Greatest Gen, Boomer, X Gen, Y Gen, Z Gen digital professional; or which continent you reside in, what industry you work for; or which stage of life you experience, there are universal principles to shape the digital mindset, sharpen multi-dimensional digital visions, cultivate the culture of innovation, to become the digital ninja and master the digital flow more effortlessly.
2. What is Digital Master all about?
It is neither a digital encyclopedia nor a digital entertainment book, but a framework to connect digital dots and bridge the difference between information age and digital era; between business and technology; between local and globe; between silo and holism; between now and future. It is also a digital playbook to instruct digital professionals to shape game-changing mindset in order to compete for the future.
Yes, it is a book with more than 450 pages, reading it is more like to drink a cup of coffee or tea, you need to sip carefully, do not just swallow it in the holiday season, but use it as a guide book to navigate your digital journey in 2015 and beyond.
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Introduction URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTubeFollow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital Master is only a click away now, yes, it is not a holiday entertaining book, but if you would like to do some holiday mind crafting, exercise strategic muscles to keep digital fit; go beyond the surface to capture multi-dimensional insight and digital foresight, then, you shall get this book, for new year brainstorming. It is:
A Guide Book to Debunk the Myths of Enterprise Digital Maturity;A Bridge Book to Mind Industrial era and Digital Era;A Play Book to Shape Game-changing Digital MindsetsA Framework to Orchestrate Dynamic Digital Capabilities.An Ongoing Book to write the new chapter of Digital Innovation.
1. Who are the audience of Digital Master?
“The primary attribute of Digital Master is its ability to appeal to all level of business reader. Most such books on the topic narrow the focus to a specific segment of business pursuit (commonly, marketing or branding) or a specific audience (typically managers or entrepreneurs). It's rare to see a book that seeks and promotes inclusion at all business levels and is directed not just to leaders, but to workers.” - MidWest Digital Review
Every generation has its own revolution -now we are all C-Gen: the Connected Digital Generation. Every digital professional and every organization has the opportunity to become a Digital Master; No matter you are Greatest Gen, Boomer, X Gen, Y Gen, Z Gen digital professional; or which continent you reside in, what industry you work for; or which stage of life you experience, there are universal principles to shape the digital mindset, sharpen multi-dimensional digital visions, cultivate the culture of innovation, to become the digital ninja and master the digital flow more effortlessly.
2. What is Digital Master all about?
It is neither a digital encyclopedia nor a digital entertainment book, but a framework to connect digital dots and bridge the difference between information age and digital era; between business and technology; between local and globe; between silo and holism; between now and future. It is also a digital playbook to instruct digital professionals to shape game-changing mindset in order to compete for the future.
Yes, it is a book with more than 450 pages, reading it is more like to drink a cup of coffee or tea, you need to sip carefully, do not just swallow it in the holiday season, but use it as a guide book to navigate your digital journey in 2015 and beyond.
Digital Master Kindle Version Book Order URL
Digital Master Introduction URL
Digital Master Author URL
Digital Master Video Clip on YouTubeFollow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
January 3, 2015
Analytics Myth: Can we Predict the "Unpredictable"?
Business analytics is on its progress and “forward-thinking” journey, moving from descriptive analytics (analyze what happened) to predictive analytics (what will happen) and prescriptive analytics (how to respond to it), still, it’s an emerging scientific discipline and even a digial management transformation, there are many puzzles need to be solved and numerous questions waiting for the answers. Here is an interesting debate: Can we predict the "unpredictable"?
The prediction of the future is based on the analysis of the past. The best prediction is optimal. Bellman's optimality principle provides a global maximum on the set of all variants. Much depends on the evaluation criterion. The principle that an optimal sequence of decisions in a multistage decision process has the property that whatever the initial state and decisions are, the remaining decisions must constitute an optimal policy with regard to the state resulting from the first decisions.
So analysts/scientists think the optimization is more applicable to decision making using multivariant forecast. What is done in discussed method is actually converting multivariant forecast into monovariant forecast using optimization with specific (haos-related) criterion. The optimal prediction system should have the best results in different areas according to the specific or customized quality criteria. In this sense, obtaining statistical validation is a matter of time. The accuracy of the prediction will depend on the completeness of the input information. Dynamic programming was created for this task.
The analysts/scientists do not pretend that they can predict something which is random, but something which is chaotic. A chaotic process is deterministic therefore it is theoretically predictable. The data analysts do not have or try to compute a function that represent the evolution of the market time series. The only thing they do is that they observe the level of chaos of the market time series is constant then they generate the future points in order that the new whole time series conserve the same level of chaos. It is an optimization process in which, at each step, they select, among a set of randomly generated potential points, the one that minimize the distance between the new value of chaos level of the new time series when they include this point and the initial value of level of chaos measured on the original time series.
The generation of a new point is an optimization process and there is no guaranty that the optimal value is unique. Note that good universal algorithm should in some cases produce "no forecast" as result - just because random events can not be predicted by definition. The measure of chaos is a function but more often the data analysts do not have a function that describe the time series values; or the prediction algorithm pretends to be universal: sequence of segments with random length, odd segments represent sinusoid slightly randomly distorted, even segments represented by constant value slightly randomly distorted too. Switching points correspond to certain external events.
The characteristics of digitalization are complexity, uncertainty, unpredictability and ambiguity, data analytics is the significant tool to help digital professionals (from leaders/managers to front desk/customer reps) make the right decisions (both strategic and tactical) at the right time, on one side, technology is make significant progress, but still a long way to reach its full maturity; the talent data analysts/scientists empowered by smart tools can make forecast more accurately in varying industries, still, there’re many things that are still unpredictable, you just have to prepare for the different scenarios.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
CIO’s Perception:Human Factors in DevOp
DevOps is the latest evolution of the Agile movement to bring even more stakeholders to the table by bridging siloes. DevOps' technical foundation-Continuous Delivery extends Agile's foundation XP. However, DevOps is not just the engineering best practices, it is more as people centric management discipline,
The human factor is absolutely key -Feedback/Communication/Empathy. The Automation part of DevOps is the easy part. The confusing, debatable, easily-missed, can't-shrink-wrap-and-sell-it aspect of DevOps is Feedback/Communication/Empathy. One without the other is not DevOps. Together they deliver Velocity, which is the primary goal of DevOps. Velocity is what allows businesses to innovate in the delivery of services without betting the farm every time they take a risk. The most important aspect of DevOps is Communication/Empathy (because the Automation engineering is fairly straightforward.) The middle-men can't profit from those touchy-feely parts of DevOps, so they tend to be ignored in favor of the tech. The challenge for any company aspiring to DevOps-orientation is cultivating the right team. Team members must respect each other enough to take cross-functional guidance.
DevOps is more of a soft skill... getting the teams to collaborate better... Technology is just the enabler. People can be in different teams and yet still collaborate very successfully. Or they can be in the same (devops) team and work independently (if not divisively). More often, the conversation about DevOps quickly descends into a technology and tools discussion which is understandable due to its technical root; however, the cultural aspects are much more important, and the CALMS acronym has summarized it well: * Culture * Automation * Lean * Measurement * Sharing
The team makeup is absolutely critical. No collaboration or automation tool will make dev and ops folks work well together unless the culture is right in the first place. The challenge in many organizations, however, is this trust isn't there. Both sides know they have a stake in the game, but years of talking across each other and blaming each other is tough to overcome. Often times this stems from cross team rivalries between the senior managers. That is a great challenge for a lot of teams to overcome. Technically, what to see it happen? Take some system engineers and put them on a project as developers. Then, take some developers and put them on a project as system engineers. You'll want to make sure you identify the "right" kind of folks - the ones who are always eager to learn something new. Support them by making available senior mentors and advisors for their new project role but keep the padawans accountable for the work. After a project or two, then you'll have the "right" kind of resources for DevOps - switch hitters. With a team made up of mostly these resources, real DevOps style productivity now becomes a possibility. Mix in some good solution architecture, resource templating, continuous integration, test automation and deployment automation tools and you'll have yourself a fully equipped modern DevOps styled team.
The core philosophy of DevOps is to bridge silo thinking, build the culture of collaboration, to manage IT organization more holistically in order to improve efficiency & effectiveness, and further to optimize IT agility and maturity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
January 2, 2015
What’s CIO’s New Year Resolution
Leadership flows from a combination of character, learning agility, life experiences, capability & knowledge, success & failure and a desire to lead.
CIOs play one of the most significant roles in leading organization’s digital transformation, because they are in the unique position to oversight business processes and capabilities, information is the life blood, and technology is the innovation catalyst. We are living in a world that has perhaps moved faster than many people around us, what’s CIOs’ New Year Reflection & Resolution, the top priority, the leadership substance & style, and the trend of IT leadership & digital transformation?
CIO leadership reflection: Leadership is considered the top attribute for CIOs (by far). What are the most important attributes of leadership, and how can they best be attained? Leadership flows from a combination of character, learning agility, life experiences, capability & knowledge, success & failure and a desire to lead. It is an expression of one's personality through a group/team/organization of people. Just picking up finance, HR, project management, management training, leadership training, etc...gives you the skills, but does nothing to determine how they are applied. Putting it all together so people are passionate about the success of your project, organization, or company is a good start. Your staff, people need to feel that your vision and mission is now also theirs. This is a good measurement of CIO leadership. More specifically, CIO's resolution includes: a. Build thought leadership reputation about leadership, strategy, technology vision, talent management. b.Do you want the company and departments looking to you for leadership around the competitive appliction of technology in a rapidly changing market? c. Do you personally want to adapt to changes to meet the shifting needs of your company and staff? d. Do you want to lead change efforts at your company? Do you want to be in a constant learning mode? e. Are you passionate about what technology, communication and positive change can do for the success of your company and beyond?
IT maturity reality check: IT enables the business and supports the applications its customers use to not just transact, but transform business. If the CIO isn't tied in closely to different business functions, and run in silo, IT is still in lower maturity. CIOs has to continue to lead IT transformation by questioning.a. Is IT provocative: Does IT stretch, challenge, or interrupt the status quo? b. Is IT grounded? Provide real world examples on how IT could work. c. Is IT desired? Does the organization need this? Do the clients want this? Does IT help the business? d. Does IT have a positive and bold message and brand? e. Does IT provide guidance for the organization’s future? f. Does IT expand the zone of possible change and development? g. Is IT in a high involvement process? h. Does IT drive team building and organizational learning?
The trend to customer facing CIOs is continuing to gain momentum. In many industries IT has been seen--rightly or wrongly--as a 'support' organization and so its customer interaction is more limited. Now as we move further into the world of 'SMAC-IT' (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud, Internet of Things), every industry will discover IT is deeply involved in the core business processes and key business capabilities. The days when IT could exist as a silo are gone. connection has always been critical - and is becoming more so. The CIO has to build a productive, cordial relationship with C-level peers - and ensure that IT is seen as a solution provider. The SMAC-IT evolution also explains the need for CIO and other CXOs’ collaboration: so much of what marketing does depends on IT today, and so much of what the products are becoming depends on IT tomorrow, that the functions will be inextricably intertwined. And if a CIO can't listen carefully to business concerns, playback for stakeholders with a certain amount of empathy to take care of them, and maintain a solid grasp of the strategic direction and focus of their business in order to set appropriate priorities to otherwise endless requests, then maybe they are in the wrong position. Digital IT shall not only satisfy the internal customers, perhaps more critically, how to work closely with customer service/sales & marketing department to make direct impact on the every touch point of end customer experience, because IT is the key differentiator to optimize business processes, build differentiated capability and improve corporate agility.
Due to the accelerated speed of business changes, IT is transforming from “build to last” to “design to change.” IT is playing the pivot role in digital transformation, and CIOs have to master both leadership philosophy and IT management disciplines, be the business strategist and tactical IT manager skillfully for thriving in the new year & beyond.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
CIOs play one of the most significant roles in leading organization’s digital transformation, because they are in the unique position to oversight business processes and capabilities, information is the life blood, and technology is the innovation catalyst. We are living in a world that has perhaps moved faster than many people around us, what’s CIOs’ New Year Reflection & Resolution, the top priority, the leadership substance & style, and the trend of IT leadership & digital transformation?CIO leadership reflection: Leadership is considered the top attribute for CIOs (by far). What are the most important attributes of leadership, and how can they best be attained? Leadership flows from a combination of character, learning agility, life experiences, capability & knowledge, success & failure and a desire to lead. It is an expression of one's personality through a group/team/organization of people. Just picking up finance, HR, project management, management training, leadership training, etc...gives you the skills, but does nothing to determine how they are applied. Putting it all together so people are passionate about the success of your project, organization, or company is a good start. Your staff, people need to feel that your vision and mission is now also theirs. This is a good measurement of CIO leadership. More specifically, CIO's resolution includes: a. Build thought leadership reputation about leadership, strategy, technology vision, talent management. b.Do you want the company and departments looking to you for leadership around the competitive appliction of technology in a rapidly changing market? c. Do you personally want to adapt to changes to meet the shifting needs of your company and staff? d. Do you want to lead change efforts at your company? Do you want to be in a constant learning mode? e. Are you passionate about what technology, communication and positive change can do for the success of your company and beyond?
IT maturity reality check: IT enables the business and supports the applications its customers use to not just transact, but transform business. If the CIO isn't tied in closely to different business functions, and run in silo, IT is still in lower maturity. CIOs has to continue to lead IT transformation by questioning.a. Is IT provocative: Does IT stretch, challenge, or interrupt the status quo? b. Is IT grounded? Provide real world examples on how IT could work. c. Is IT desired? Does the organization need this? Do the clients want this? Does IT help the business? d. Does IT have a positive and bold message and brand? e. Does IT provide guidance for the organization’s future? f. Does IT expand the zone of possible change and development? g. Is IT in a high involvement process? h. Does IT drive team building and organizational learning?
The trend to customer facing CIOs is continuing to gain momentum. In many industries IT has been seen--rightly or wrongly--as a 'support' organization and so its customer interaction is more limited. Now as we move further into the world of 'SMAC-IT' (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud, Internet of Things), every industry will discover IT is deeply involved in the core business processes and key business capabilities. The days when IT could exist as a silo are gone. connection has always been critical - and is becoming more so. The CIO has to build a productive, cordial relationship with C-level peers - and ensure that IT is seen as a solution provider. The SMAC-IT evolution also explains the need for CIO and other CXOs’ collaboration: so much of what marketing does depends on IT today, and so much of what the products are becoming depends on IT tomorrow, that the functions will be inextricably intertwined. And if a CIO can't listen carefully to business concerns, playback for stakeholders with a certain amount of empathy to take care of them, and maintain a solid grasp of the strategic direction and focus of their business in order to set appropriate priorities to otherwise endless requests, then maybe they are in the wrong position. Digital IT shall not only satisfy the internal customers, perhaps more critically, how to work closely with customer service/sales & marketing department to make direct impact on the every touch point of end customer experience, because IT is the key differentiator to optimize business processes, build differentiated capability and improve corporate agility.
Due to the accelerated speed of business changes, IT is transforming from “build to last” to “design to change.” IT is playing the pivot role in digital transformation, and CIOs have to master both leadership philosophy and IT management disciplines, be the business strategist and tactical IT manager skillfully for thriving in the new year & beyond.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Agile’s RoadBlocks
There are many roadblocks on the Agile way: from mindset to culture of mediocre; from misunderstanding to lack of focus....
Agile becomes the mainstream software management methodology, even turns to be the corporate management philosophy, however, going Agile is not an easy journey, what are the biggest problems for people or companies when they decide to go Agile.What is the hardest thing when you choose that road? What are your biggest pains?
Doing Agile is just a first step; being agile needs to have a totally different mindset. Move out of your regular communication patterns since you should work close together with people in all positions: management, testers, requirement engineers, developers, etc. You should also see changes in scope as something evolving and embrace it. Another word which shouldn't be forgotten is flexibility and how to quickly adapt to new conditions on every level. There are of course a lot more, moving to agile is nothing that you just do, it is something that takes time and there is needs of open minds throughout the organization and the right conditions.
One of the biggest challenges is to adjust the balance between utter the randomness of "Wrong agility": Translating agile=faster/easier, is not accurate, agile perhaps means to be faster to adapt to changes, but not necessarily means to be easier for implementation. There is no magical agile ingredient, other than smaller planned iteration. So waterfall lovers should be less scared of agile, and agile lovers, be less arrogant of your disliking Waterfall - it’s the same thing implemented differently. The question is, why do people stay with these beliefs? For whom is it really a problem to admit that you have to prioritize what is most important, to empower the teams and so on. For any agile transformation to succeed, enough people in management position need to be aware about and able to adapt the organization itself so that wasteful processes are removed. In the end, this can lead to that individuals will have to change their job. Maybe this is the true root cause behind resistance towards Agile.
Prioritization - having the business prioritize their backlog without creating multiple, competing backlogs. The roadblocks of Agile are caused by different factors:Product Owners - identifying and making available real Product Owners rather than proxy Product Owners or product ownership by committee. Roles & Responsibility - Reluctance of individuals to give up their individual roles for a role in a team HR - insistence on individual performance measurement over team performance Empowerment - technical executives that are reluctant to empower teams for fear of undermining their own status in the organisation Planning - insistence on long range planning and deadlines, even when they provide little benefit Working Practices - a belief that working long hours solves problems and th3 teams that don't work long hours are by definition under performing Blame - the blaming of individuals as scapegoats for poor process and management
From tuning the agile mind to cultivating the culture of agility, from setting the right priority to building the right business processes, Agile is all about the iterative communication & iteration, and continuous delivery and improvement.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Agile becomes the mainstream software management methodology, even turns to be the corporate management philosophy, however, going Agile is not an easy journey, what are the biggest problems for people or companies when they decide to go Agile.What is the hardest thing when you choose that road? What are your biggest pains?
Doing Agile is just a first step; being agile needs to have a totally different mindset. Move out of your regular communication patterns since you should work close together with people in all positions: management, testers, requirement engineers, developers, etc. You should also see changes in scope as something evolving and embrace it. Another word which shouldn't be forgotten is flexibility and how to quickly adapt to new conditions on every level. There are of course a lot more, moving to agile is nothing that you just do, it is something that takes time and there is needs of open minds throughout the organization and the right conditions.
One of the biggest challenges is to adjust the balance between utter the randomness of "Wrong agility": Translating agile=faster/easier, is not accurate, agile perhaps means to be faster to adapt to changes, but not necessarily means to be easier for implementation. There is no magical agile ingredient, other than smaller planned iteration. So waterfall lovers should be less scared of agile, and agile lovers, be less arrogant of your disliking Waterfall - it’s the same thing implemented differently. The question is, why do people stay with these beliefs? For whom is it really a problem to admit that you have to prioritize what is most important, to empower the teams and so on. For any agile transformation to succeed, enough people in management position need to be aware about and able to adapt the organization itself so that wasteful processes are removed. In the end, this can lead to that individuals will have to change their job. Maybe this is the true root cause behind resistance towards Agile.
Prioritization - having the business prioritize their backlog without creating multiple, competing backlogs. The roadblocks of Agile are caused by different factors:Product Owners - identifying and making available real Product Owners rather than proxy Product Owners or product ownership by committee. Roles & Responsibility - Reluctance of individuals to give up their individual roles for a role in a team HR - insistence on individual performance measurement over team performance Empowerment - technical executives that are reluctant to empower teams for fear of undermining their own status in the organisation Planning - insistence on long range planning and deadlines, even when they provide little benefit Working Practices - a belief that working long hours solves problems and th3 teams that don't work long hours are by definition under performing Blame - the blaming of individuals as scapegoats for poor process and managementFrom tuning the agile mind to cultivating the culture of agility, from setting the right priority to building the right business processes, Agile is all about the iterative communication & iteration, and continuous delivery and improvement.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
What's Your Decision-Making Style?
Decisions always refer to the future and future is always uncertain.
Decision making is both the art and science, it takes both analytics and intuition; philosophy and methodology, substance and style. In order to make the best decisions, it is better having a mix of decision-making styles in the room. Can you spot the different types? Do you aim for a balanced representation of styles?
Making decision is one of the most significant tasks for leaders and managers. Leadership is a difficult title to earn and even harder to retain, in part because there is no one right leadership style that works in every situation. The trick is to know your preferred, competent and inadequate styles, assess the current situation, and determine which one will be required. If you can, exercise it; if you do not have the capability, trust and delegate the responsibility.
Decision makers decide matters in both strategic and tactical manners. Decision making in itself is a complex and simple process based on the probable effect of the decision on the outcome of the organizational goal. The decision making style should be based on the situation: 1) the situation needs quick decision ("Timer") 2) in the case of having enough time: collect different opinions ("The Expressor"), 3) have an idea, but want to harmonize the group ("Harmonizer). The most bad style is "Always decide quickly."
People with different personalities approach decision making in different ways. And some have difficulty making any decision at all, which of course is in and of itself a passive decision "not to decide." For example there are those who solicit the input from others and those who do not feel the need to do so. There are those who can instinctively jump to the answer and those who have to work a defined process in order to make a decision. Each theory categorizes these things differently but they all tend to address similar behavioral patterns.
Leveraging various factors and perspective in decision making: Strategic decision making may mean that the decision arrived at is in the best interests of the entire team for the long haul rather than the immediate tactical expectation of those awaiting the outcome.Whatever people are "pre-programmed" to do at the instinctual level, you may be programmed to make a decision by first figuring out the appropriate process and then working the equation. Get others involved where they may be affected by the outcome, or where others should be involved in the decision because of ethics or corporate culture, So hopefully you go about decision making differently depending on various factors such as how critical the decision is, the impact of the decision on others, what will be involved in the execution after the decision and more.
Some thought and quotes across addressing decision taking: -Decisions are necessary as a result of limited resources in time, knowledge, capital, people,... -Decisions always refer to the future. -Future is always uncertain. -Decisions are always characterized by lack of information and knowledge. -Prognoses are always difficult - in particular those referring to the future-Future is the most difficult problem of our era.-The safest point in time for a prognosis is shortly after the event (Churchill) -The best way to predict future is to invent it. (Kay)-There will be a time, when our offspring will be astonished about our lack of knowledge of such apparent issues.(Seneca) -I was in search of a one-armed economist so that the guy could never make a statement and then say: on the other hand (Truman) -All our finite decisions are taken in a very transient emotional stage. (Proust)
Due to the complexity, ambiguity and un-predictivity of business dynamic, it is not possible to make effective decisions via pure gut feeling or ivory tower approach, the digital decision making style is to think fast and slow, think independently and leverage multiple perspectives. analyze and synthesize for making the right decisions at the right time by the right people.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Decision making is both the art and science, it takes both analytics and intuition; philosophy and methodology, substance and style. In order to make the best decisions, it is better having a mix of decision-making styles in the room. Can you spot the different types? Do you aim for a balanced representation of styles?
Making decision is one of the most significant tasks for leaders and managers. Leadership is a difficult title to earn and even harder to retain, in part because there is no one right leadership style that works in every situation. The trick is to know your preferred, competent and inadequate styles, assess the current situation, and determine which one will be required. If you can, exercise it; if you do not have the capability, trust and delegate the responsibility.
Decision makers decide matters in both strategic and tactical manners. Decision making in itself is a complex and simple process based on the probable effect of the decision on the outcome of the organizational goal. The decision making style should be based on the situation: 1) the situation needs quick decision ("Timer") 2) in the case of having enough time: collect different opinions ("The Expressor"), 3) have an idea, but want to harmonize the group ("Harmonizer). The most bad style is "Always decide quickly."
People with different personalities approach decision making in different ways. And some have difficulty making any decision at all, which of course is in and of itself a passive decision "not to decide." For example there are those who solicit the input from others and those who do not feel the need to do so. There are those who can instinctively jump to the answer and those who have to work a defined process in order to make a decision. Each theory categorizes these things differently but they all tend to address similar behavioral patterns.
Leveraging various factors and perspective in decision making: Strategic decision making may mean that the decision arrived at is in the best interests of the entire team for the long haul rather than the immediate tactical expectation of those awaiting the outcome.Whatever people are "pre-programmed" to do at the instinctual level, you may be programmed to make a decision by first figuring out the appropriate process and then working the equation. Get others involved where they may be affected by the outcome, or where others should be involved in the decision because of ethics or corporate culture, So hopefully you go about decision making differently depending on various factors such as how critical the decision is, the impact of the decision on others, what will be involved in the execution after the decision and more.
Some thought and quotes across addressing decision taking: -Decisions are necessary as a result of limited resources in time, knowledge, capital, people,... -Decisions always refer to the future. -Future is always uncertain. -Decisions are always characterized by lack of information and knowledge. -Prognoses are always difficult - in particular those referring to the future-Future is the most difficult problem of our era.-The safest point in time for a prognosis is shortly after the event (Churchill) -The best way to predict future is to invent it. (Kay)-There will be a time, when our offspring will be astonished about our lack of knowledge of such apparent issues.(Seneca) -I was in search of a one-armed economist so that the guy could never make a statement and then say: on the other hand (Truman) -All our finite decisions are taken in a very transient emotional stage. (Proust)
Due to the complexity, ambiguity and un-predictivity of business dynamic, it is not possible to make effective decisions via pure gut feeling or ivory tower approach, the digital decision making style is to think fast and slow, think independently and leverage multiple perspectives. analyze and synthesize for making the right decisions at the right time by the right people.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
A “Bridge-Like” Mind
H.G.Well wished the world to be such a whole "as coherent and consistent as possible."
Digital means flow, the mind flow, the information and knowledge flow. Everything starts from a point, a thought, a drop.... and later when it flow it keeps getting added values or similar thoughts and at the end we get a result we chase continuously. Like drops of water when it starts flowing it may not know that one day it can also reach the ocean but when few drops like that keeps getting added each time it becomes river and few rivers when flows together it can reach the ocean continuously concentrates only on flowing irrespective of situations. An interesting dimension to explore is the psychological drivers behind a desire for such massive flow and connectivity--or the resistance to such an existence. It should be remembered that the most creative solutions come mainly from mixed teams, while respecting the diversity of gender, ethnicity and multiculturalism, of different generations. The mixed teams will be the riverbed for creativity, and more importantly the “bridge-like” mind are on demand to oversight the "sea of thoughts", recognize the cognitive difference and provide insight into the trade-offs of diverse philosophies and approaches.
There are many concepts seem to be opposite, indeed, they are complementary to keep the world balanced. Such as: simplicity & complexity; simplicity is the ultimate level of complexity; but every intelligent things has certain level of complexity, the world is composed with both; individualism vs. communitarianism: individualism is about the rights of the individual, it seeks to let each person grow or fail on their own; but communitarianism is about the rights of the group or society. It seems to put the family, group, company and society before the individual; they are not completely opposite, but complementary to sustain the prosperity at both individual and societal level for the long term. It is true of economics system as well, some are capitalist, some are socialist; some are corporatist, some are mercantilist. Most are a mix of those distinct economic systems. There is nothing absolutely right or wrong, but more often the silo or polar (extreme) thinking and black & white perception make the world divide. The hyperconnectivity of digital should bridge multiple views to make the world not just flat, but round as it is.
Economic and political models provide some insight into the trade-offs associated with either approach (massive individuality vs massive collectivity). On the one hand, someone could be richer for all the positive inputs from the collective--but we know that all inputs would not be objectively positive. And what do positive and negative mean in this context? there would be the--likely competitive--interests of the individual and the collective, and how to leverage them. Now the insightful discussions and dialogues involving the best brains in the world can clarify and bridge such differences. Discussions are often conducted with the primary goal of increasing clarity and understanding of the issue with the assumption that we are working with a stable reality. In discussion, individual contributions often center around “rightness” and being valued for it. In “dialogue,” one submits one’s best thinking, knowing that other peoples’ reflections will help improve it rather than destroy it. Dialogue calls for temporarily suspending judgments. Dialogue reveals assumptions and biases for reevaluation. Dialogue causes introspection on one’s own position. It is the rich resource of internet to hold human's minds together in something like a common interpretation of reality, and with the possibility to bridge the difference.
H.G.Well wished the world to be such a whole "as coherent and consistent as possible." World Brain is a collection of essays and addresses by the English science fiction pioneer, social reformer, evolutionary biologist and historian H. G. Wells, dating from the period of 1936–38. Throughout the book, Wells describes his vision of the World Brain: a new, free, synthetic, authoritative, permanent "World Encyclopaedia" that could help world citizens make the best use of universal information resources and make the best contribution to world peace. He wished the world to be such a whole "as coherent and consistent as possible." He wished that wise world citizens would ensure world peace. ”Though never using the actual term knowledge management, describes his vision of the ’World Brain’, which could allow the intellectual organization of the sum total of our collective knowledge. The World Brain would represent ‘a universal organization and clarification of knowledge and ideas.’ Wells anticipated the World Wide Web, albeit in a utopia idealized manner, when he spoke of this ‘wide gap between… at present unassembled and unexploited best thought and knowledge in the world… We live in a world unused of misapplied knowledge and skill.’” Wells (1938)
Let the world as a whole run in harmonized way by adopting the BEST of two global hemisphere -East & West. East or west, moral values are same. Love or hatred both are defined and understood similarly in east and west philosophy. Difference is in culture and the ways of life. Thanks to development in media, there is no limit to sharing of knowledge. We can always study and adopt the best at individual level or at social forums of similar minded people. Not all westerners think alike; not all Easterners think alike. And there is a lot of overlap with other factors beside east/west involved. In IT, techies seem to think alike when in the same discipline. Some of each culture think hierarchically from a hierarchical database culture. Some of each culture think relationally from that database culture. But still, when the world is leaping to the digital hyperconnectivity, the differences are shrinking and all cultures can be adapted to the more agile or universal way. But merging of philosophies should happen in such a way that it should not hurt one's belief or trust or the ego or the sentiments. Awareness brings knowledge and food for thoughts and people will start thinking in that direction to see if western and eastern views can be synergized to come to a common ground and a process found by which human beings can learn to stay away from afflictions and negativity thus making the world a better place to live.
The world is still full of puzzles. It needs the “bridge-like” minds to connect the dots: Is scientific knowledge superior to spiritual knowledge? Are our advances clearly superior to those of previous cultures, while recognizing that we have taken discoveries of earlier cultures and applied them to allow us to make new advances? Interdependence and co-operation rather than domination is the only way to advance business communities; where prosperity is valued for its ability to offer a new world order that seeks the common good and overcome the challenges facing humankind.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital means flow, the mind flow, the information and knowledge flow. Everything starts from a point, a thought, a drop.... and later when it flow it keeps getting added values or similar thoughts and at the end we get a result we chase continuously. Like drops of water when it starts flowing it may not know that one day it can also reach the ocean but when few drops like that keeps getting added each time it becomes river and few rivers when flows together it can reach the ocean continuously concentrates only on flowing irrespective of situations. An interesting dimension to explore is the psychological drivers behind a desire for such massive flow and connectivity--or the resistance to such an existence. It should be remembered that the most creative solutions come mainly from mixed teams, while respecting the diversity of gender, ethnicity and multiculturalism, of different generations. The mixed teams will be the riverbed for creativity, and more importantly the “bridge-like” mind are on demand to oversight the "sea of thoughts", recognize the cognitive difference and provide insight into the trade-offs of diverse philosophies and approaches.
There are many concepts seem to be opposite, indeed, they are complementary to keep the world balanced. Such as: simplicity & complexity; simplicity is the ultimate level of complexity; but every intelligent things has certain level of complexity, the world is composed with both; individualism vs. communitarianism: individualism is about the rights of the individual, it seeks to let each person grow or fail on their own; but communitarianism is about the rights of the group or society. It seems to put the family, group, company and society before the individual; they are not completely opposite, but complementary to sustain the prosperity at both individual and societal level for the long term. It is true of economics system as well, some are capitalist, some are socialist; some are corporatist, some are mercantilist. Most are a mix of those distinct economic systems. There is nothing absolutely right or wrong, but more often the silo or polar (extreme) thinking and black & white perception make the world divide. The hyperconnectivity of digital should bridge multiple views to make the world not just flat, but round as it is.
Economic and political models provide some insight into the trade-offs associated with either approach (massive individuality vs massive collectivity). On the one hand, someone could be richer for all the positive inputs from the collective--but we know that all inputs would not be objectively positive. And what do positive and negative mean in this context? there would be the--likely competitive--interests of the individual and the collective, and how to leverage them. Now the insightful discussions and dialogues involving the best brains in the world can clarify and bridge such differences. Discussions are often conducted with the primary goal of increasing clarity and understanding of the issue with the assumption that we are working with a stable reality. In discussion, individual contributions often center around “rightness” and being valued for it. In “dialogue,” one submits one’s best thinking, knowing that other peoples’ reflections will help improve it rather than destroy it. Dialogue calls for temporarily suspending judgments. Dialogue reveals assumptions and biases for reevaluation. Dialogue causes introspection on one’s own position. It is the rich resource of internet to hold human's minds together in something like a common interpretation of reality, and with the possibility to bridge the difference.
H.G.Well wished the world to be such a whole "as coherent and consistent as possible." World Brain is a collection of essays and addresses by the English science fiction pioneer, social reformer, evolutionary biologist and historian H. G. Wells, dating from the period of 1936–38. Throughout the book, Wells describes his vision of the World Brain: a new, free, synthetic, authoritative, permanent "World Encyclopaedia" that could help world citizens make the best use of universal information resources and make the best contribution to world peace. He wished the world to be such a whole "as coherent and consistent as possible." He wished that wise world citizens would ensure world peace. ”Though never using the actual term knowledge management, describes his vision of the ’World Brain’, which could allow the intellectual organization of the sum total of our collective knowledge. The World Brain would represent ‘a universal organization and clarification of knowledge and ideas.’ Wells anticipated the World Wide Web, albeit in a utopia idealized manner, when he spoke of this ‘wide gap between… at present unassembled and unexploited best thought and knowledge in the world… We live in a world unused of misapplied knowledge and skill.’” Wells (1938)
Let the world as a whole run in harmonized way by adopting the BEST of two global hemisphere -East & West. East or west, moral values are same. Love or hatred both are defined and understood similarly in east and west philosophy. Difference is in culture and the ways of life. Thanks to development in media, there is no limit to sharing of knowledge. We can always study and adopt the best at individual level or at social forums of similar minded people. Not all westerners think alike; not all Easterners think alike. And there is a lot of overlap with other factors beside east/west involved. In IT, techies seem to think alike when in the same discipline. Some of each culture think hierarchically from a hierarchical database culture. Some of each culture think relationally from that database culture. But still, when the world is leaping to the digital hyperconnectivity, the differences are shrinking and all cultures can be adapted to the more agile or universal way. But merging of philosophies should happen in such a way that it should not hurt one's belief or trust or the ego or the sentiments. Awareness brings knowledge and food for thoughts and people will start thinking in that direction to see if western and eastern views can be synergized to come to a common ground and a process found by which human beings can learn to stay away from afflictions and negativity thus making the world a better place to live.The world is still full of puzzles. It needs the “bridge-like” minds to connect the dots: Is scientific knowledge superior to spiritual knowledge? Are our advances clearly superior to those of previous cultures, while recognizing that we have taken discoveries of earlier cultures and applied them to allow us to make new advances? Interdependence and co-operation rather than domination is the only way to advance business communities; where prosperity is valued for its ability to offer a new world order that seeks the common good and overcome the challenges facing humankind.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
December 31, 2014
New Year Perspective: Five Digital Principles to Grease the Wheel of Digitalization
Change is not easy, it is not just a new year resolution, it's an ongoing capability.
It is the last day of 2014: From world perspective, it’s a turbulent year, for many of us, it was also not a year full of joy. Still, the stories of global events may connect the world closer; and the bitterness of life may catalyze one’s maturity. And it is the very moment to wrap up such a year! Instead of dropping the crystal ball to predict the future trends, here, we would sum up the key principles to grease the wheel of digitalization in the new year & beyond, and share a few of our most popular blogs this year.
Digital Leadership Principle: EMPATHYDigital is the age of empathy, it is the ability to think as if you were in the other person’s position, empathy conveys the RESPECT which is crucial to bind peer-to-peer relationship and connect the mind and touch the heart. Without empathy, there cannot be rapport and thus no sustainable business relationships. As the world moves into a hyper-connected and interdependent digital relationship age, empathy is the single defining quality that will distinguish great leaders from the rest, to go deeper, not louder; first understand, then be understood; first listen, then make a conversation; first envision, then communicate; first observe, then perceive; first learn to absorb knowledge, then capture insight, and gain wisdom. Leadership influence via empathy is one of those things that makes the human world go round, being coherent with its physical shape, and being harmonized with nature ecosystem. Three Trends in Digital Leadership
2. Digital Mind Crafting Principle: Hybrid Thinking Digital era is uncertain and ambiguous, hyperconnected and interdependent, linear or polar thinking will cause problems, not solutions. Agile Critical Thinking to recognize that logic and reason alone is inadequate. Logic and reason alone maintain low ceilings and there is not much possibility for sustainable problem solving. If logic and reason were the key, all problems would have been solved long ago. One's own critical thinking ability or skills are only part of the equation since your judgement is affected by the corporate culture, imperfect information, competing agendas, etc. The practical reality is that taking the 'emotional' element is often what drives decisions. The hybrid mind -“agile critical thinking” approach is to teach people how to apply critical thinking techniques to evaluate and incorporate data about individual differences, team dynamics and organizational realities into the equation - rather than dismiss or minimize their impact.Critical thinking has the potential to be a deeply creative process, given that it includes the need to evaluate reasoning. This will very often require that we examine evidence (and other claims) in terms of other-possibilities. Agile Critical Thinking3. Digital Culture Principle: InclusiversityInclusiversity mind focuses on commonalities as human being, not difference. By focusing only on what makes people different, you actually gear their mind to think about differences first. This defeats the point of diversity. By not focusing so much on the diversities, but on the commonalities that we all have as human beings is an excellent way to create understanding, cohesion and collaboration. A great way to do this is to do an appreciative inquiry intervention whereby the first step is to ask people to interview each other 1:1 on what their best moments in life were, their hopes, dreams and aspirations. People very quickly realize that there are far fewer differences between them than points they have in common, commonalities that can create the base for collaboration and success. It is important to have a handle on the unconscious bias that we all have, and how that can play out, unintentionally, in the workplace, that even before tackling diversity goals and objectives. You need to focus on the commonalities that exist between people. Also look at diversity from a business context - how to manage diverse work teams, how to use it as a competitive advantage.An "Inclusiversity" Mind
4. Digital Talent Management Principle: Hire Mindset, Build CapabilityAs only saying: hire character, train for skills. If character is your authenticity, then mindset is your identification. Hiring mindset means to discover the very talent who can "figure it out." The right mind is the foundation to build competitive capabilities and drive the right attitude. That flies in the face of "hiring just for skills." Consider the position and environment you are hiring for. For example, if the role requires judgment, temperament, skills to persuade a larger group, understanding global social capital, managing diverse interests etc, filling it with a more systems thinking, complexity thinking and empathetic thinking type is the right approach. The linear skillset more often can not fit for the digital dynamic or collective world brains, but capabilities with the “recombinant” nature, can make the continuous delivery and improvement.Hire Mindset, Train for Skills
5. Digital Governance Principle: Prevention is more Superior than Fixing
The emergent digital technologies brings both significant opportunities and unprecedented risks in business and society today. It is critical to sense and deal with problems in their smallest state (spirit form), before they become the flambe of the day. Essentially in every work situation, many managers face this conundrum: it's simply easier to fight fires than proactively prevent them. As the technical complexity and organizational complexity increase the half-life of the improvement cycle increases. Low hanging fruit gets results fast, but then the more difficult improvements and the capability building, with the impact of a paradigm change, take a very long time. In the area of projects, organizations go for firefighting rather than capability building; and therefore fail to realize the three+ times returns available in long run. It is easier to measure efficiency than effectiveness; it is easier to reactively fix the problems than proactively cultivating organizations' capability to successfully deliver their strategy and projects. Most organizations (even with generous measurement) were at level 1 where they achieved negative returns on their project investments over time. Governance Rule #1.
Change is not easy, it is not just a new year resolution, it's an ongoing capability. Here is one of our most popular debates: Does the business or the world really want transformational leader? What’s your thought at the end of year? and what’s your new year wish or resolution?
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
It is the last day of 2014: From world perspective, it’s a turbulent year, for many of us, it was also not a year full of joy. Still, the stories of global events may connect the world closer; and the bitterness of life may catalyze one’s maturity. And it is the very moment to wrap up such a year! Instead of dropping the crystal ball to predict the future trends, here, we would sum up the key principles to grease the wheel of digitalization in the new year & beyond, and share a few of our most popular blogs this year. Digital Leadership Principle: EMPATHYDigital is the age of empathy, it is the ability to think as if you were in the other person’s position, empathy conveys the RESPECT which is crucial to bind peer-to-peer relationship and connect the mind and touch the heart. Without empathy, there cannot be rapport and thus no sustainable business relationships. As the world moves into a hyper-connected and interdependent digital relationship age, empathy is the single defining quality that will distinguish great leaders from the rest, to go deeper, not louder; first understand, then be understood; first listen, then make a conversation; first envision, then communicate; first observe, then perceive; first learn to absorb knowledge, then capture insight, and gain wisdom. Leadership influence via empathy is one of those things that makes the human world go round, being coherent with its physical shape, and being harmonized with nature ecosystem. Three Trends in Digital Leadership
2. Digital Mind Crafting Principle: Hybrid Thinking Digital era is uncertain and ambiguous, hyperconnected and interdependent, linear or polar thinking will cause problems, not solutions. Agile Critical Thinking to recognize that logic and reason alone is inadequate. Logic and reason alone maintain low ceilings and there is not much possibility for sustainable problem solving. If logic and reason were the key, all problems would have been solved long ago. One's own critical thinking ability or skills are only part of the equation since your judgement is affected by the corporate culture, imperfect information, competing agendas, etc. The practical reality is that taking the 'emotional' element is often what drives decisions. The hybrid mind -“agile critical thinking” approach is to teach people how to apply critical thinking techniques to evaluate and incorporate data about individual differences, team dynamics and organizational realities into the equation - rather than dismiss or minimize their impact.Critical thinking has the potential to be a deeply creative process, given that it includes the need to evaluate reasoning. This will very often require that we examine evidence (and other claims) in terms of other-possibilities. Agile Critical Thinking3. Digital Culture Principle: InclusiversityInclusiversity mind focuses on commonalities as human being, not difference. By focusing only on what makes people different, you actually gear their mind to think about differences first. This defeats the point of diversity. By not focusing so much on the diversities, but on the commonalities that we all have as human beings is an excellent way to create understanding, cohesion and collaboration. A great way to do this is to do an appreciative inquiry intervention whereby the first step is to ask people to interview each other 1:1 on what their best moments in life were, their hopes, dreams and aspirations. People very quickly realize that there are far fewer differences between them than points they have in common, commonalities that can create the base for collaboration and success. It is important to have a handle on the unconscious bias that we all have, and how that can play out, unintentionally, in the workplace, that even before tackling diversity goals and objectives. You need to focus on the commonalities that exist between people. Also look at diversity from a business context - how to manage diverse work teams, how to use it as a competitive advantage.An "Inclusiversity" Mind
4. Digital Talent Management Principle: Hire Mindset, Build CapabilityAs only saying: hire character, train for skills. If character is your authenticity, then mindset is your identification. Hiring mindset means to discover the very talent who can "figure it out." The right mind is the foundation to build competitive capabilities and drive the right attitude. That flies in the face of "hiring just for skills." Consider the position and environment you are hiring for. For example, if the role requires judgment, temperament, skills to persuade a larger group, understanding global social capital, managing diverse interests etc, filling it with a more systems thinking, complexity thinking and empathetic thinking type is the right approach. The linear skillset more often can not fit for the digital dynamic or collective world brains, but capabilities with the “recombinant” nature, can make the continuous delivery and improvement.Hire Mindset, Train for Skills
5. Digital Governance Principle: Prevention is more Superior than Fixing
The emergent digital technologies brings both significant opportunities and unprecedented risks in business and society today. It is critical to sense and deal with problems in their smallest state (spirit form), before they become the flambe of the day. Essentially in every work situation, many managers face this conundrum: it's simply easier to fight fires than proactively prevent them. As the technical complexity and organizational complexity increase the half-life of the improvement cycle increases. Low hanging fruit gets results fast, but then the more difficult improvements and the capability building, with the impact of a paradigm change, take a very long time. In the area of projects, organizations go for firefighting rather than capability building; and therefore fail to realize the three+ times returns available in long run. It is easier to measure efficiency than effectiveness; it is easier to reactively fix the problems than proactively cultivating organizations' capability to successfully deliver their strategy and projects. Most organizations (even with generous measurement) were at level 1 where they achieved negative returns on their project investments over time. Governance Rule #1.Change is not easy, it is not just a new year resolution, it's an ongoing capability. Here is one of our most popular debates: Does the business or the world really want transformational leader? What’s your thought at the end of year? and what’s your new year wish or resolution?
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
