Leadership Like Bridge: To Celebrate Golden Gate Bridge 75th Birthday at Memorial Day Weekend

A great city with water barriers and no bridges is like a skyscraper with no elevators. Bridges are a monument to progress.” – Strauss by Joseph P

Memorial Day reminds us of veteran’s leadership lessons: the courage, the sacrifice, the commitment and the disciplines., etc. We also celebrate Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th birthday on Sun., what can we learn from this man-made miracle, the most beautiful bridge in the world?

1. Leadership Build Up Like Bridge Construction, is a Purposeful Journey

The construction of what was to become the world's largest suspension bridge was a colossal task. At the time many people did not believe it was technically possible to span the Golden Gate.

But despite the disbelief, sneering and the Great Depression, Joseph Strauss was able to find support and financial back for the project, It took thousands of workers, four years and 35 million dollars to complete the structure. On May 27, 1937 the Golden Gate Bridge was inaugurated by 18.000 people who walked across the bridge.

Same as leadership build up, need  purpose, courage, character and determination to break down barriers and avoid pitfalls. What is authentic leadership: the real leadership is about bridging the cultural, cognizant and conceptual gap, not setting boundaries, and strengthen the weakest link in the leadership chains; The future of leader'ship' lies in the ability to not only navigate new waters, but also to create those waters in which the ship will be lead.      

                                                                                              

2. Leadership like Golden Gate Bridge, the essential, the style and the color

Golden Gate Bridge average traffic crossings are about 41 million per year, it becomes significant transportation channel in San Francisco bay, The bridge is popular with pedestrians and bicyclists as well as cars, The Golden Gate Bridge has always been painted orange vermilion, deemed "International Orange”, the distinctive orange color was selected because it blends well with the span's natural setting as it is a warm color consistent with the warm colors of the land masses in the setting as distinct from the cool colors of the sky and sea. It also provides enhanced visibility for passing ships. Besides it’s functionality, Golden Gate Bridge is also a stylish world famous landmark and bright symbol of city

Same as real leadership, the main functions may include: improve business efficiency via working inside the system; and influence on effectiveness via working on the system to shape the environment at multi-dimensional way, leadership landmark is its influence, full of color, brighten the human society.

Courage is valuable in position of the leader. You can win only if you don’t think in traditional way and don’t over-trust existing systems and question structures and yourself. Your thoughts, education and experience might be not valid tomorrow, because things are changing.

3.The Mighty Task is Done, but Leadership job is never Done

When the Golden Gate Bridge construction was completed, the chief designer Strass wrote the poem:

the Mighty Task is Done in May, 1937

“….An honored cause and nobly fought
And that which they so bravely wrought,
Now glorifies their deed,
No selfish urge shall stain its life,
Nor envy, greed, intrigue, nor strife,
Nor false, ignoble creed.”

The same inspiration is for true leadership, however, the leadership journey maybe never done, courage is valuable in position of the leader. The leadership need awareness, trust, choice and focus, the future of leadership like bridge, need observing, encouraging, supporting, recognizing and rewarding, with influence essential to embrace the true color.

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Seven Deadly Sins of “Culture So Yesterday”

Every organization has its unique style of working which often contributes to its culture. Culture is a blend of core values, belief, myth (how people think and do things) that translates to the overall success of any company. it becomes the most invisible, but powerful fabric surrounding in modern business (micro-culture) and society (macro-culture) today, as the old saying: “culture eats strategy for breakfast” or “culture eats process for lunch”, more critically, culture now becomes key factors for talent to decide their next career journey, as culture likes water, can lift or sink the ship, or push it towards the right direction.

           

A healthy culture will always encourage an employee to stay motivated otherwise lead you to quit. Usually organization has mix bag of cultural ingredients,  if it turns to be too toxic or salty, then business will tarnish its brand, and alienate its employees and customers. Here are seven deadly sins of “Culture So Yesterday”:

1.   Homogenous Leadership Team

Culture is set "intentionally" or "unintentionally," and  is (always) "set from the TOP." . To quote Drucker: “The spirit of organization comes from top”. The homogenous leadership team is uninspiring for the diversified, multi-generational workforce today, it will also leave blind spot in strategy crafting and culture inertia for business transformation.  

The numbers speak for themselves ---- Gallup reports only 17% of employees are engaged. A well defined culture can 'make' an organization thrive, however, it takes leadership who "walk the talk." Those who don't, destroy their own credibility as well as their organization!

2.   Bureaucratic Business Process

The bureaucratic business culture and process are not agile to adapt to the expedited change facing business today, over-trust the process, not people, and excessive bureaucracy impedes quick, hypothesis-driven decision-making, also stifle innovation and business progression.

Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, "adhocracy" replaces bureaucratic.  In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power, a new era of information sharing replaces hierarchy.

3.   Negative Office Politics

Then there’s mini-culture or sub-culture within cultures unknown to the chiefs, which is called office politics that can lie, cheat, and steal, even beat up / kill outsiders, even consort to take down other tribal members.

Culture is indeed important. Most of us may not like to be too deep in the office politics on which your performance evaluation is based on, or being in a office where the relationships have gradually been damaged by the inefficient management decisions. 

4.   Toxic Macro-Culture Embedded in Business Culture

Culture is a habit. Habits can be changed with understanding and strong will. Every race, country, religion and region has different habits. Some cultures may still inherit the primitive old habit back in agricultural or earlier industrial age, they do not fit in the dynamic and contemporary theme needed to advance human society.

As the world is becoming a single village due to globalization, we need to check our culture, retain the good in it and adapt the one that's better. It's the same for business organizations. The better culture means winning organization. The toxic macro-culture may infect business culture, on the contrary, the progressive business culture will influence macro-culture positively and push human society forward.

5.   Culture of Silo Thinking

Silos develop as organizations grow. From executives to middle mangers and employees, silo thinking may hurt organization as a whole, functions compete with each other for limited resources, such silo thinking is political at the extreme , the leaders of business divisions are playing for their own teams rather than for the whole business’s benefit, make it challenging to orchestrate business effectively and efficiently.

Moreover, those who have ability to attract capital may think themselves or their functions superior, with ignorance of the possible reduction in resources to their division benefits the company as a whole, or without considering the criticality of collective team leadership and holistic business perspective.

6.   Culture of Distrust

When a company hires a new professional, it is hiring not only for their experience, skills, talent, knowledge and professional skills, also for connecting talent with the philosophy and business culture of the organization. There is thus a mutual trust, win-win & enrichment between the two parties.

Culture of distrust breaks such link, makes win-lose or lose-lose for company and employees. Old-school companies and leaders may think trust is embodied in a paycheck, but it’s not. Trust is earned, like respect. Workers who trust management will also trust the brand. If the individuals don’t think their value congruence with business mission or vision, they may not trust their managers for performance review or feedback; On the other side, manager may micro-manage their employees due to distrust , which may cause stress, tension, fear between management and employees, reduce productivity and staff engagement.  

7.   Folly Stretch Goal without Value & Purpose

Be definition,  a stretch goal is a goal "That cannot be achieved by incremental or small improvements but require extending oneself to the limit to be actualized”.  Expressed in the saying, "You cannot cross a chasm in two steps.”, it may have good intention to unleash human potential; However, the folly stretch goal may turn to be  “destructive financial goal pursuit”, that leads to de-motivating / unethical behavior and/or excessive risk taking.

It’s not goal, but vision energize people. the stretch goal should not just be the 'crunching finance data", but also need have a vivid picture, embedded with business's value and culture, to energize individual, it also need adjust to the very nature of talent. Albert Einstein once said that you "can't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree" and he was right. Make the goals attainable/reasonable and the outcomes are positive for all, and the next generation of performance management should include both culture and number.

Every organization will need periodically review their culture, to pay more attention to the toxicity rate of their culture, as the higher the rate, the shorter their business’s life span.

Also the talent need be culture agile: Culture is a friend, culture is an enemy. today it's a buddy, tomorrow it's a foe. Understanding the culture of organization is to know where should we compromise & where should we put our foot down? Change or you will be changed. Each one of us is part of culture, we also need become the change we’d like to see.

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CIO’s Next Practice: De-Learning, Re-Learning & Learning Agility

Technology becomes pervasive in modern enterprise today, CIO plays one of the significant business roles; on the other side, the rapidly change business climate also makes CIO feel like to live at the tropical jungle, facing many attacks, in the danger of getting dismissed as techies without business savvy by their executive peers, or getting lagged behind  if becoming too far removed from recent technology trends, some CIOs may also have victim mentality to be a second class executive without seat at big table.

How should CIO survive and thrive at such a dynamic environment? Besides practicing the three principles discussed earlier, the next practice for CIO could be to cultivate learning agility.

Learning agility has been defined via one of Korn/Ferry’s white papers as: the willingness and ability to learn and then apply those lessons to succeed in new situations. Leaders who are learning agile continuously seek new challenges, solicit direct feedback, self-reflect, and get jobs done resourcefully. They see unique patterns and make fresh connections that others overlook.

1. Mental Agility

--the ability to examine problems in unique and unusual ways

To embrace mental agility, CIO may need become critical and creative thinker at the same time, to practice “de-learning’ and “re-learning”, CIO with diversified experiences such as cross-functional, cross-industrial and cross-cultural background may also help them connect dots to approach problems with fresh thinking and unique ways.

The bias of thinking CIO as infrastructure/utility manager only or the high rate of IT project failure rate should make every CIO, young or old to shape the new box of thinking and mental agility, ponder further about  future of IT and CIO as a leadership role to make influences.

2. Self-Awareness/Reflection

--extent to which an individual knows his or her true strengths and weaknesses

Through self-reflection, CIO may understand self best: are you strategist or techie; are you analytic expert or synthetic thinker; are you visionary or solutionary., etc. at most of circumstances, CIO may need wear a couple of hats, take different actions at varies situations. CIO need be a big picture thinker, but also need master some details in which business can take unique advantage to compete for the long term. Such as, that CIOs are well aware of new market trends & technological advancements, and constantly be on the lookout for how these can be leveraged effectively to achieve improvements for the organization- cost efficiency,  end user satisfaction/flexibility, security, and governance.

3. People Agility

-- skilled communicator who can work with diverse types of people

Communication is one of critical factors to decide CIOs’ effectiveness, As they may  need master all styles of conversations to develop situational wisdom and influential competency, to rebuild IT’s reputation as value creator and innovation hub.

The bad communication syndrome may include such as: getting lost in business-IT translation or getting distracted in technical details, the wrong context & KPIs for different audience, or lack of business focus., etc. Best communicator CIOs need know how to present strategically at round table and how to make value debate with business customers; to drive IT staff’s progress via effective conversation of understanding IT project complexity, also have touchy-feely talk with knowing end customers’ concerns. 

4. Change Agility

-- likes to experiment and comfortable with change

Today’s business leaders need to get a new set of skills such as leadership, critical thinking, creativity, ethics, global perspective, and cultural awareness. What other skills are demanded by twenty-first-century business realities? From a couple of academic and consulting surveys, “The key skills include innovating, dealing with situations that you have not dealt with before, possessing the confidence and the experience to be entrepreneurial.  You have to be able to deal with other cultures and situations you’re not familiar with. So, all of these types of soft skills are going to be as important as the technical skills that traditionally thought sufficient.

By very nature of information technology, change is the only constant, the CIOs with learning agility can move out of their comfort zone, take risks, learn from mistakes, and to create the environment for innovation and creativity, reward risks, invest in new revenue generating initiatives. They will be walking the talk- showing the team in a very personal manner that it is imperative to cultivate the culture of learning  stay on top of technology advancements. It means the successful leaders continually learned, bent, and flexed as their work climate changed. In other words, they were learning agile.

5. Result Agility

     --delivers results in challenging first-time situations

Most of IT organizations today still stick to level two or three of maturity for business/IT alignment, muddled in the middle. Through practicing learning agility, CIOs need learn both from their own experience, and from success stories or failure case studies cross-disciplines,  and apply those lessons to succeed in new situations, in order to improve IT project success rate and IT performance maturity level.

The IT management results may also need be presented via balanced scoreboard to leverage business agility objectively, both judge the result from short-term gain and long term growth perspective.

At the age of digitization, experiment on innovation, delivering result at first-time situation will be more frequent than ever, CIO with learning agility, can continue adopting agile methodology and run IT more effectively. Learning agility is even more critical for the executives at larger enterprises such as Fortune 500, as they are the one anchoring big ship towards the right direction timely, make influence on macro-economic climate, exemplify the positive culture for our society.  

CIOs, are you learning agile?

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BPM ‘s Mighty Waters

BPM walk through the rocky road, and start climbing the value trails, through recent surveys, that BPM is increasingly becoming a part of mainstream management thinking, though only 16% of respondents believe that their organization’s processes are currently at the “optimized” level knowledge and practical experience of the topic, 82% believe as more executives know about BPM –to manage the knowing from flowing,  the more C-level executives may enjoy the BPM’s mighty waters, especially a few live streams merged in recently.

  

1. Social BPM

Social business is the transformation many organizations blueprint now, beyond social platform, in essence, social enterprise means the new mindset, the culture of learning & sharing, the more creative way to do business in order to adapt to the new generation of customers, always-on, hyper-connected, hybrid operational environment and extended enterprise boundary.

BPM is moving into an unstructured, more collaborative age. Rules management will be the way to stay properly governed, visible, and compliant, while dynamically keeping business processes on track with changing and complex, to reach desired goals and KPIs.

Social business processes can be categorized into:

·        Social co-creation via collaborative projects

·        Social profile management via user participation

·        Social publishing for content sharing and aggregation

·        Social feedback via engaging customers to improve customer service.

Social BPM also means to converge BPM with CRM, BI, MDM and other cutting-edge technologies in order to optimize processes and cultivate competitive business capabilities, to go beyond inside-out business process, to delight customer via outside-in viewpoint. Companies are using Business Process Management to support new ways of interacting with customers

Though social BPM is not fully mature yet, the business need ride the wave, to re-tool the key business process via social angles and embrace change management via social collaboration.

2. Gamification Embedded into BPM

Gamification is a way of using game mechanics (challenges, recognition and rewards) to improve a business process, with the goal of fulfilling business objectives.  Organizations can use gamification to motivate behaviors that elevate business performance.

Gamification can also help business understand key processes, then how to improve and optimize them to encourage positive behaviors and improve staff satisfaction. As BPM is no long just process automation in which everything is mapped in a step-by-step process flow; through gamification, BPM will help diagnose flaws in process design, also identify the key steps to success, then become integral part of process design for business,  to achieve high-performance result. Such as: the learning management approach speeds domain mastery, or the service excellence via incentives and leader boards

 3. BPM Meets BI

The other trend is about aligning Business Process Management and Business Intelligence to achieve business process excellence. The traditional BPM may have the limit to see the context of processes. By integrating BI and BPM, the closed loop performance management can be achieved, where the metrics compared with goals, and KPIs fed back to improve processes and decisions.

• Optimize decision making process via integrating BPM & BI, takes business insight to drive decision process;
• Closed Loop Performance Management by combining BI with rule management associated with BPM to monitor process from outside-in perspective.
• Business agility is enabled via process and data linked dynamically, fueled by master data and ruled by data governance and principles.

The more agile and intelligent process via social BPM, mobile BPM or BPM in the Cloud,  will improve cost efficiency, business agility,  governance, compliance with regulations, customer centricity, innovation-driven and improve staff satisfaction

                                             

In last two decade, BPM has its roots in industrial management practices such as TQM, BPR, BPI, at the age of digitization, BPM may become the mighty waters for more business to dive in, to nourish the new fruit via innovation.  

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Three Perceptions of Global Diversity Ranking Report

Recently released Globaldiversity ranking report, commissioned by Forbes Insights and conducted by Oxford Economic, based on a weighted composite index to compare and benchmark employee diversity across countries, industries and occupations. 
The index is comprehensive and takes into account many different types of diversity. Three separate indexes compose the composite index: a country index based on 50 nations, both developed and  developing; an industry index based on 14 industrial sectors; and an occupation index based on the nine core occupation categories used in ISCO (International Standard Classification of Occupations).
This report provides a statistical look at worldwide workforce diversity data. The perceptions may include:

1        The Progress of Global Human Society

·         Workforce Diversity Drive Culture Evolution: The culture worldwide varies, some traditional cultures may become the main obstacle for workforce diversity and societal progress. However, the industry leaders in the report take initiative to proactively support diversity, as they believe diversity will enable innovation and innovation is the power of business growth, the business development will further help make societal progress and economical improvement.

·         Female Workforce Drive Economy Growth: It’s worth noting that greater economic equality between men and women has been shown to reduce poverty rates, boost GDP and lead to better governance. In order to improve female participation rates, governments can adopt a number of proven approaches such as flex-time  initiatives, free or subsidized childcare, and tax breaks for married couples when both partners work.

2        The Power of Leadership Diversity

·         Breaking  Through Glass Ceiling: The proportion of women who have climbed the corporate ladder and made it to board-of-director status varies greatly among countries. The nations with the highest percentage of female board members are Norway (36%), the Philippines (23%), Sweden (23%). It’s not surprising that Norway is at the top of the list, since it was the first country to mandate a quota system for board participation in publicly listed companies

·         Businesses led by Female Leaders Outperform Market: Studies have demonstrated a positive correlation between women in leadership positions and a company’s financial performance. For example, in the Forbes 2010 “World’s 100  Most Powerful women” issue, a study of the stock performance of the 26 publicly traded companies run by women on the list discovered that, as a group, they outperformed the market, where most companies were run by male CEOs. On average, the 26 companies beat the market by 28% and their respective industries by 15%.

3        The Pipeline of Talent with Multi-dimensional Diversity

·         Build a Global Power House of Multi-culture Talent: The multi-dimensional diversity includes gender, age, ethnicity, disability, country of birth, skills and education, number of hours worked, language, and sectoral and geographical distribution, The vision of the diversity program was to be a truly diversified firm in terms of race, gender and organizational culture and to promote the principle of strength through diversity

·         Worldwide Point of View: Diversity program success has come from increasing understanding of the diverse characteristics of the workforce, and the use of a variety of approaches across as many aspects of diversity as possible.  The biggest challenge could be to pick the best of the best.

Diversity Is Integral to Growth, the report concluded: A diverse workforce is critical to reflecting a global society and companies’ customer base. It allows executives to understand  their clients’ needs better and communicate more effectively. Additionally, diversity drives innovation and fosters competitiveness.

 In summary:: Diversity reflects human’s progress to make difference and gain wisdom via professional growth, to retool the modern culture via business influence and digital footprint.

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EA & BA: A Tale of Two Roles

"In order to be a realist you must believe in miracles."  -David Ben-Gurion

EA-Enterprise Architect and BA-Business Analyst are two interesting business roles cause a lot of debate, it may indicate both roles are crucial at hyper-complex enterprise today, also reflect two talent trends in 21^st century: enterprise visionary and business solutionary.

The diverse understanding about the two roles may also depend on the maturity of EA, the maturity of IT and overall maturity of enterprise,

  

Here are five key differences between the two roles:

1.   Breadth & Depth

EA may focus on enterprise level scope, while BA might need dig into specific project, though it may not say breadth is always superior than depth

 Level of Details:  The BA works at a fine level of detail to fully understand the current situation and/or problem to be solved. The EA works at a course grained level of detail, a synthesis (summarization and/or abstraction) of all projects and/or business areas that is, a portfolio view of business areas. 

                                        

2. Synthesis vs. Analysis:

Enterprise Architect is a "synthesis" role - key words are holism, visioning, aggregation, while Business Analyst is “analysis” role-key word are: artifact, insight, segregation.

EA’s main focus is on understanding the links between the parts, as EA need synthesize the holistic business view to ensure enterprise as a whole more effective and efficient than the sum of parts; while BA need analyze and solve specific business problem via gathering inter-related data & fact

Both EA and BA could be process driven, EA with synthetic mind, help blueprint the future of business; Business Analyst with analytic mind help breakdown the problems, they may have complementary skills to solve complex issues

3. Insight vs. Foresight , Reality vs. Future

EA need not only walk through today’s enterprise, more importantly help perceive the future state of business; while BA need focus on reality,  untangle current business puzzles.

Business Architecture and Business Analysis are linked to each other in a closed reinforcing loop (analysis provides "insight" to synthesis, while synthesis provides "foresight" to analysis) - each feeding on to the other for a better outcome (which is understanding and management of business complexity).

4. Accuracy vs. Betterment

 Two roles may focus on different business objectives: The BA works towards the accuracy of the representations (e.g., artifacts, models, etc.) of the current state of their projects and/or business areas for localized decision making. The EA works towards enterprise “betterment” (which is dependent upon the enterprise business strategy & future state of business) which leads to decisions that affect multiple projects and/or business areas which embrace collaboration, consolidation and reuse. 

5. “Dispassionately” breakdown vs. “Passionately” blueprint:

 From innovation perspective: business analyst need "dispassionately" examine the alternative, though "dispassionately", also need such curiosity and creativity to open the new box of mindset in order to solve the old problems; for EA, to blueprint the future of business is not just knowledge & skills, but also passion & vision and imagination 

No doubt, the organization need both types of talents: EA as enterprise visionary,  and BA, as business solutionary. If the talent are good at both disciplines, which is even more valuable, and at least, two type of talent need work more closely either via physical team or virtual group to solve complex, cross-disciplinary issues and shape an optimal enterprise. By working together, they can achieve first rate intelligence:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Five “C” Words at C-Suite

Modern business executives may inundate with numerous meetings, sometimes they get over-optimistic about blue sky strategy, or get lost in business details, or get limited by their official title,  what does big table conference need focus on, which roles C-Level should play: movers & shakers, innovators or thought leaders?

1. Customer:  the “Center” of strategic conversation

•  Customer Insight & Foresight: How does executive team make effective decisions to delight current customers and enchant potential customers.

•  Blue Ocean Strategy: “In Blue Oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for both growth and profit.” Customer-centric strategy is also about how to make fresh choices to explore the blue ocean. 

2. Culture: The Spirit of Organization is from Top

•  Toxic Culture sinks the ship: culture is about how people think and do things in the organization, the toxic culture includes such as uninspiring homogeneous leadership, destructive office politics, bureaucracy, or myopic goal setting., etc.
  

• “Culture” is Big Talk: Building a performance culture starts with management of organizational change, something that is rarely successful when driven from the bottom up. Organizational culture need be first shaped at C-suite, and executives need become culture masters first.

3. Capabilities: 21st Century Business Capabilities

 If customer is the Center of business strategy, the big “WHY”, and culture is “HOW” to do things,  then capability is about “WHAT” that enables us to execute the strategy . The strategy conversation need also focus on how to cultivate 21^st century’s business capabilities:

• Leaning Capability:  it's about Knowledge Management Capability, Human Mindset Capability and Organizational Intelligence.
• Change Capability: it's Change Management Capability, such as agility, elasticity to adapt to the future;
• Innovation Capability: Core Competency, Business value system,  information flowing capability., etc.
• Process Optimization Capabilities: How to keep business lean, reduce inefficiency & complexity --the process, cost structure., etc
• Governance Capabilities: GRC-Governance, Risk Management, Compliance

4. Change: The leaders need be change agent first

 Either culture change or business transformation, Change is the only constant today. The inspiring & authentic leaders need become change agents themselves,  to encourage critical thinking and creative thinking and to adapt to the changes.

Therefore, Change need be the always on topic at C-Suite, not for change’s sake, but for achieving long term business goal and purpose.

• Continuous Improvement: the well-defined KPI Scoreboard may help leadership team to measure business improvement scientifically.

• Business Transformation: Only high-performance leadership team with cognitive capability and diversified viewpoint can help transform business into right direction and avoid blind spot.

5. Cloud: Not just technology terminology, but also the new mindset & model to run business.

Cloud is not only about future of IT, but also about how to run an “always-on” business without border and how to satisfy the customers at hybrid business environment. It might be another interesting talk at C-Suite.

• New business delivery model: Businesses see the cloud model as a good response to business and market demand
• New mindset: . Despite potential savings in infrastructure, costs and improved business flexibility on cloud, the new mindset is needed to leverage security, governance and risk management.

 Bonus Word: Concentration.

Strategy need focus & priority, C-Suite may just need walk the talk, to execute it solidly via practicing above five “C”s, to become Change agent and achieve high-performance business result.

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