Win-Win, is Mission Possible

Modern business and society become more complex and interdependent than ever, there’s no any party can dominate at the negotiation table from every perspective. The "Win-Win" could be translated to mean "mutually beneficial" and should be seen as a negotiation guiding principle which emphasizes fairness in business play. Encouraging this mind set of equity and fairness should in theory build better long term business relationships.

The definition of Win-Win offered by author and speaker Roger Dawson:
"Win-win negotiating is not a matter of just getting what you want, but of helping the other person get what he or she wants also. And one of the most powerful thoughts you can have.”

                                            

1.  Is Win-Win Mission Possible?

 The world is full of win-lose, lose-win and lose-lose deals. In fact if you just look at the odds of a win-win without any other factors, the odds of a coin-toss win-win would be only 25%; and even less because win-win's, by their very nature, are so hard to do and require work, constant attention and focus.

(1)   Is Win-Win only theoretic fantasy or realistic possible

Because win-win is hard and is not the norm, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist and isn't the place a person would like to be. It is about finding out what represents a "Win" in the other party's mind and see if it’s possible to give it to them without harm to fulfilling on your "Win" criteria.

(2)   Classic Example of Win-Win:

The classical example of a win-win situation is the situation where two persons compete for an orange.

·        Win/lose Result: They fight and the stronger party gets the orange, the other party gets nothing.

·        Win-Win Results:  can emerge when the two persons stop fighting and begin to share their objectives and interests and discover that one wants the orange for the peel to perfume a cake, while the other one wants it for the juice to make a drink. win/win agreement is to give the peel to one while the other gets the juice. Both objectives are achieved

(3)   Win Enough or Win-More, Win-Less Scenario:

It takes two parties to tango,  many may think inevitably in an arrangement of such,  one party will gain more than the other,  so it is hard to get "even steven"(50/50) which some may argue as a true Win-Win.

Not all business negotiations are about "die hard" winning.  In fact, very few are actually win-lose situations. They are "win enough" situations which are finding out what represents a "Win" in the other party's mind and see if it’s possible to achieve. There are really no options other than win-win, at least win-enough. The problem is not of practicing win-win,  but building a logical, effective way to achieve it without too much compromise. Like all noble things, it’s challenging, but it does pay huge dividends.

 2. Win-Win via Multitude of Lenses

 That said, context of win-win is not about literally winning. It is about negotiating a reasoned and comfortable end point for both parties, to achieve ultimate satisfaction point:

1)      Philosophically Win-Win is about Holism & Balance:

Philosophical speaking, winning without purpose is just like seeing without perceiving,  listening without understanding or learning without gaining wisdom. It's matching and touching the antic Asian philosophical concept of the Yin-Yang, Holism, Balance: a Win-Win Business Deal are made through empathetic understanding, quantitative and qualitative Analysis, "balanced" deal, or a masterful negotiation.

Sufi poet/philosopher Rumi once said something like this. "You never lose anything. Just get it back in some other shape". Or paradoxically,  win-win at one level is often win-lose at another level.

2)      Conceptually, theoretically and practically, is a pursuit of win-win possible?

It seems counter to basic economic or marketing principles. Profit is all about minimizing compromise, extracting the most from your opponent and giving up as little as possible, however morally unfair that may seem. "Winning" to maximizing shareholder's value" as a mantra might be one of the root causes for recent economical recession. Social responsibility and win-win are not antithetical. Its important to be socially responsible while still being responsible to one's shareholders

3)      What happens if “winner-takes-all” organizationally, societally or culturally?

 Then first we must recognize that pervasive systemically entrenched “winner-takes-all“ cultures and practices must be completely discredited as parasitic, myopic, undesirable and unsustainable. Win-Win helps build up last relationship and target long term winning position in strategy making.

4)      Strategically, do most win-win deals have an exit strategy?

The winner may pretend to lose in order to gain the long term advantage; every business changes strategies. A once win-win could become a very competitive environment as both companies evolve.

5)      Psychologically: How does Win-Win stimulate your Happiness Level?

Most win-win situations may leave one feeling frustrated and confused. You’re trying to figure out how you come out a winner. You see how the others win. But your winning seems more like “less losing” or even winning like losing psychologically. But a state of "reasonable happiness" could possibly be achieved for both parties so called "Win-Win" situations, one may not feel extremely happy about it, but satisfy enough.

  

3. Ultimate Level of Win-Win: Deal Made in Heaven

  As we all know diamonds are hard to find. Same is with win-win both in business and in life itself. The facets of the definition win-win that it starts to look as a beautiful high-quality diamond. And it really exists, but as we all know diamonds are hard to find, same as Win-Win.

Win-Win is a specific point in any business deal between two or more parties, where all parties have the utmost satisfaction at the same moment, of going ahead with the deal.

It’s debatable whether that “Highest Point of Satisfaction” for all parties can actually be known and reached, because satisfaction is again each parties' perception, which is not easily defined. But there are deals which are WIN-WIN, where both the parties are equally happy based on their calculation and defined KPI. We may call it: The Deal Made in Heaven, it takes creativity, dedication and empathy to manage one.

Win-Win Matters for Humanity: Living standards, salaries, life expectancies across the world have been consistently rising over the last few hundred years. To a zero-sum, this isn't possible - because someone must be losing for the others to be winning. But in reality, the pie is not of fixed size, via innovation and societal progress, the pie is created bigger enough to advance humanity.

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Strategy in One Sentence: Ten Creative Insight

“He who fails to plan is planning to fail" - Winston Churchill

 1.  Strategy is like GPS, with zoomed in vision as destination, lead organization at the right direction, leverage resource, and execute effectively.

2. Strategy is like a 'Kite on a String', its about projecting and balancing variables on the business continuum to achieve that goal further away in the distance .

3. Good strategy is a funnel thru which, all ideas that have been previously filtered, now flow and create a positive result for your company growth,

4. Strategy is the pillar of organizational existence, its design, structure, functions, vision and mission. Without it, its a black hole.!

5. Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. A Goal without Plan is a foolish wish

6. Strategy is the art of executive decision making

7. Strategic planning follow 80/20 principle to provide focus. It helps the leaders to focus on the 20% of activities that will yield 80% future success.

8. A strategic plan is important as it is the road map for the achievement of an organization's goals, mission and purposes

  

9. A real strategy is neither a document nor a forecast but rather an overall approach based on a diagnosis of a challenge

10. You can judge the outcome of the good strategy, the people are happy working with clear purpose and the organization has the competency sailing through the thick and thin of the changing environment because it has more willing people.

twitter: @pearl_zhu

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Mirror, Mirror, What is Best Strategy

A strategy is a set of choices following with a series of action designed to achieve a vision and compete for the future. There’re so many good strategy theories from ancient to contemporary, from eastern to western, today’s strategist may just wonder: what is best strategy?

 1. The Origin of Strategy

To trace its lexical root, a strategy derives from the Greek strategia, "office of general, command, generalship.”,  the Greek equivalent for the modern word “strategy” would have been “strategike episteme” or (general’s knowledge) “strategon sophia” (general’s wisdom). One of the most famous Latin works in the area of military strategy is written by Frontius and has the Greek title of Strategemata

Sun Tzu’s The  Art of War, written in 400 B.C. has received critical acclaim as the earliest and best work on military strategy, including those that have followed it centuries later.

 2. Magic “Five” in Famous Strategy Theories

1) Sun Tzu’s Five Elements of Strategy

• Mission: Inspire people to share the same visions, ideas and expectations
• Ground: to be able to master mountains, valleys, rivers, plains, etc. it’s about situation,  distant or immediate, difficult or easy, opportunities and risks
• Climate: it’s nature, changes in climatic conditions
• Command: Leadership, such as wisdom, humanity, credibility, courage, intelligence and firmness. 
• Method: the discipline, the moral cause, reward, punishment, logistics and metrics.

Key Take away: Winning without Conflict: Sun Tzu's book teaches winning without conflict. “A great general finds a way to win without fighting a single battle, human wisdom is the best  weapon".

2) Five Principles of Carl Von Clausewitz's Strategy

Von Clausewitz's book On War is a classic, he had career in the Prussian army, and served in a number of major campaigns, he was a thinker and philosopher who studied war to with in-depth knowledge that no one else had ever done before. He also believed that war was more like business. As he points out, both war and business involve the clash of interests. Here are his five principles.

• Principle of Plan Well with Simplicity
• Principle of Unity of Command
• Principle of Historical Examples
• Principle of using the superiority of numbers to good effect.
• Principle of System Thinking: We are part of a wider system that controls us more than we could ever know.

  3) Musashi Myamoto: Five Rings of Strategy:

As Sun Tzu, Miyamoto Mushshi was well known as a great warrior and strategist lived four hundred years ago, his books of Five Rings also make significant impact on shaping modern business strategy and the art of wisdom:

• Ground: Knowing the smallest and biggest thing, the shallowest thing and deepest thing.
• Water: With water as basis, the spirit becomes like water, water adopt the shape of its receptacle
• Fire: The spirit of fire is fierce, weather the fire is small or big, you must appreciate the spirit can come big and small
• Wind:  means old traditions, present-day traditions of strategy. It is difficult to know yourself if you do not know others.
• Void. means that which has no beginning and no end. Attaining this principle means not attaining the principle. The Way of strategy is the Way of nature.

 The Gaze in Strategy: Perception and Sight: In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.

4) Michael Porter’s Five Forces strategy

Modern business strategist: Michael Porter’s Five Forces strategy, a SWOT analysis model on creating a strong position for product or service that allows it to garner outsized profits, makes significant influence on contemporary business society.

• Marketing Entry: How easy is it for others to enter the market? 
• Threat of product/service substitution
• Bargaining power of buyers.
• Bargaining power of suppliers
• Rivalry among current competitors.

 Porter’s latest social dimension in strategy: All profit is not equal. Profit involving shared value enables society to advance more rapidly and allows companies to grow faster.  

5) Blue Ocean Strategy

“In Blue Oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for both growth and profit.”  W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne

• Reconstruct market boundaries
• Focus on the big picture, not the numbers
• Reach beyond existing demand
• Overcome key organizational hurdles
• Build execution into strategy

6)  Fifth Discipline: Talent Management Strategy:

The Fifth Discipline” series of book written by Peter Senge was published in 1990th, is all about learning. As applied in the “learning organization":

• System Thinking: Break problems down and see things laterally and sequentially
• Personal Mastery:  “Organizations learn only through individuals who learn,” says Peter Senge. As “approaching one’s life as a creative work"
• Metal Model: We must seek divergent views before developing a convergent conclusion.
• Shared Vision: “The strategy plan will not energize us, vision does"
• Team Learning: People continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire in “Learning Organization”

3.  The Purpose of Strategy

All the strategy models discussed above are conceptualized leadership essentials, yes, it's a light to guide you up, not a hand to walk you through,. As someone famously said that strategy is about shaping the future, and the future is more about  progress and evolution.

• Perspective: Chaos is a perception...if an opponent uses chaos in his strategy...it can be very effective and difficult to predict and counter, : In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things, as Miyamoto perceived. 

• Position: All these great leaders: All strategy models articulate the need for accurate intelligence of  “terrain” or creating a strong position for product or service that allows it to garner outsized profits, makes significant influence in contemporary business society

• Plan: Well planning is more than half way of success. As Clausewitz put,  plans should cover every aspect of conflict, weaving them into a single operation with an ultimate objective. 

4.  Why Strategy Fails & How to Make a Good One?

          

• . Change is Accelerated: At today’s rapidly change business environment, one can't help wondering whether selecting and sustaining a strategy is not as relevant as gathering, assembling and understanding the information about the progress a business is making with a particular strategy.  Change is accelerated, modern business is heading off with a particular strategy in the face of growing information that suggests they should be revisiting the strategy.

• Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The book: Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters, by Richard P. Rumelt well articulated the most basic idea of strategy which is the application of strength against weakness. The good strategy need include actions.

 Three-Step Strategy Making:
1) Figuring out the nature of the business challenge
2) Designing a guiding policy that produces an advantage
3) Creating a set of coordinated actions to carry out that policy.

The world and global history that clearly show how to recognize the good, reject the bad, and make good strategy a living force in the organization

 5. Mirror, Mirror, What is Best Strategy

All these great leaders: Rumelt , Paton, Sun Tzu, Clausewitz and Porter have one thing in common. They all understood that over-reliance on any particular approach to strategy is dangerous. The modern theories of strategy systematically deal with issues connected with organizational structure and psychology, anthropology and sociology, and also with all internal and external elements of organizational environment. One size doesn’t fit all.

What is best strategy, the mirror answers:

The location makes the dwelling good.
Depth of understanding makes the mind good.
A kind heart makes the giving good.
Integrity makes the government good.
Accomplishments makes your labors good.
Proper timing makes a decision good

LAO TZU  "TAO TE CHING

. 

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Earth Day Pondering: Three Pillars of Sustainability

This Sunday is Earth Day, with its mission: “to raise support for a more sustainable future as climate change continues to wreak havoc across the globe. As a sustainable society will only come about through the accumulated actions of billions of individuals. “

Essentially Earth Day reminds us of sustainability and perceive nature as something that sustains us and nurture us spiritually, psychologically and emotionally.

What is sustainability anyway? From wiki: Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of responsibility, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of stewardship, the responsible management of resource use. In ecology, sustainability describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time, a necessary precondition for the well-being of humans and other organisms. Long-lived and healthy wetlands and forests are examples of sustainable biological systems.

1.  Environmental Responsibility

1)      From Compliance to Leadership

Compliance with government regulations is a key external driver and the legally required must-do task for business today. Engaging with sustainability to meet obligations in environmental responsibility will decide business decisions and options to meet regulations, then for efficiency and ultimately for market leadership.

• Reducing energy use & waste & Emissions in operations
• Managing corporate reputation for sustainability
• Proactively responding to regulatory constraints or opportunities
• Leveraging sustainability of existing products to reach new customers or markets
• Improving employee retention and/or motivation related to sustainability activities
• Mitigating operational risk related to climate change
• Achieving higher prices or greater market share from sustainable products
• Committing R&D resources to sustainable products, managing portfolio to capture trends in sustainability

2) From Practitioner to Advocate & Educator

When we look at the hyper rising costs of energy in recent years,  it is probably top three most expensive unmanaged cost for any Fortune 500 company, and especially become the biggest concern for many energy-dependent businesses, they need become advocates and educators for corporate-wide environmental sustainability initiatives, also transcribes a path that converts outside concerns into inside engagement, it becomes significatn component of every busienss decision large or small,  focus on growth, reputation management, and return on capital. It  also need an integrated view that blends financial,nvironmental, and social performance.

From businesses governance discipline, organizations are disclosing significantly more nonfinancial information that underpins how value is and will be created. Disclosures include detailed plans for low-carbon products and services, and employee incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

2.  Economic Demands:

1)      Sustainability: From Nice to Have to Must Have

Efficiency has been a key internal driver for sustainable practices and is the low hanging fruit when moving beyond compliance and obligation. Waste of resources is costly. Reuse and reduction of waste reduces cost and creates new revenue streams to impact both bottom line and top line business growth. .

The business barriors need be overcomed in sustainability management:

• Lack of incentives tied to performance on sustainability initiatives
• Pressure of short-term earnings performance is at odds with longer-term nature of sustainability
• Lack of, or use of wrong, key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Insufficient data or information to implement initiatives
• Sustainability isn’t integrated into existing key process & performance management system
• Company leadership sets sustainability as too low a priority, business units are not engaged with implementing sustainability initiatives
• Sustainability department is disconnected from the rest of the organization, or is too low to be influential, company lacks the right capabilities and/or skills

2)      Embed Sustainability into Business Process & Operational Excellence

Sustainability leaders embed real, measurable, ongoing commitments to sustainability practices as a strategic differentiator, going beyond the immediate benefits of compliance, obligations, and efficiency. Sustainability is embedded into key business processes, and business makes decision with an integrated view that blends financial, environmental, and social performance, to gain business insight, with which to manage the risks and opportunities in the future.

The methodology and roadmap for sustainability management are designed to evaluate a company’s sustainability opportunities and risks throughout its extended value chain. It also can be used to drive innovation efforts in the development of a holistic sustainability strategy.

• Operational input/output analysis: Examines critical inputs (e.g., materials, energy) and outputs (e.g., finished products, greenhouse gas emissions, water pollutants), giving leaders a picture of the impact sustainability efforts have across the company

• Profit and loss sensitivity analysis: Helps identify the bottom-line impact that sustainability issues (e.g., energy price fluctuations) have on a business

• Regulatory risk analysis: Helps leaders anticipate both the current and likely future laws and regulations that might affect a company’s operations

• Customer and competitor analyses: Helps uncover sustainability priorities of the company’s key customers and competitors

• Brand positioning analysis: Helps assess customer sustainability priorities against product attributes and brand positioning

• Value chain analysis: By considering how change to link s in the value chain affect the operation, also achieve a new perspective on sustainability.


• Innovation analysis: :Looking to sustainability as a driver of innovation — looking beyond the company’s walls to the ecosystem of opportunities and risks posed by a dynamic set of industry partners

3) Using IT to Drive Sustainability

Essentially, a key piece of information—information around environmental and social concerns—has been missing from most business operations. Therefore, IT can play a lead role in improving corporate sustainability performance to ensure the long-term economic success of the enterprise. The commitment to doing this needs to start at the highest level of the organization, with sustainability becoming integrated into the corporate strategy, which is supported by the overall IT strategy. 

Information technology can collect, analyze, monitor, mitigate, and monetize resources within an enterprise and across its value chain, not only in the aggregate, but also across their operating units, allowing them to identify opportunities for improvement. They are able to compare themselves against industry norms to determine and report how they rank competitively in their overall sustainability performance.

3. Social Equity

The classic definition of sustainability is “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” well ariculate the social pillar in sustaiability

Social Equity is defined  as "equal opportunity, in a safe and healthy environment." Social Equity is the least defined and least understood element of the triad in creating sustainability - balancing economic, environmental and social equity. Social Equity is the perceived value of individual, organization, or brand reputation. it includes the impact on the social systems within which the organization operates. Following categories are included:

• Labor practices: Impacts on the workforce, including labor/management relations, health and safety, training and education and diversity,  investment and procurement practices, child and forced labor, security practices.

• Society: Impacts on communities, including corruption, public policy and anti-competitive behavior.

• Product responsibility: Includes product health and safety, information and labeling, marketing and privacy., etc.

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Five Principles of Carl Von Clausewitz's Strategy

Von Clausewitz's book On War is a classic, he had career in the Prussian army, and served in a number of major campaigns, he was a thinker and philosopher who studied war to with in-depth knowledge that no one else had ever done before. He also believed that war was more like business. As he points out, both war and business involve the clash of interests, although one obviously results in lots of bloodshed, the other lots of logistics,  that’s why his insight and strategy also significantly influence modern business. 

Here are five principles the business can learn from Clauswitz’s strategy:

1. Principle of Plan Well with Simplicity

Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and concise orders to ensure thorough understanding.

Von Clausewitz was a great fan of planning and believed that war plans should cover every aspect of conflict, weaving them into a single operation with an ultimate objective. In his view, no one should start a war without fully understanding what they intended to achieve by it (the political purpose) and how they intended to conduct it (the operational objective).

Same as running business or project, good planning is half of success. Always start with strategic planning with clear goal and value proposition,  following a series of cohesive actions to execute it.

2. Principle of Unity of Command

For every objective, seek unity of command and unity of effort

Von Clausewitz discusses the importance of the unification of forces in time. His main argument is actually quite simple and focuses on whether it's best to throw all your men into an engagement at once or hold some back ready to join when really needed. In his view it is far better to apply all your forces simultaneously: their effectiveness will be far greater because everything can be concentrated in a single action in a single moment in time.

Same principles fit for business, keep focus, stay hungry.  It’s critical to well integrate the best talent, the effective process and the latest technology seamlessly & synchronously to achieve high-performance result.

3. Principle of Historical Examples

The historical examples provide the best kind of proof in the study of war.

Von Clausewitz was emphatic in his view that historical examples provide the best kind of proof in the study of war. He cites four key uses of historical examples. First, they may be used as an illustration of an idea; second, they serve to show the best practice of an idea; third, they can prove the possibility of an effect, and finally, they may be used to develop theory. But he goes on to warn of the dangers too, such as only using those examples supporting a particular opinion.

Von Clausewitz also recognize the root cause of both success and failure is an essential skill if you are to remain successful and avoid the mistakes of the past. It worthes the effort to find out why something succeeds or fails by investigating the underlying factors and behaviors of those involved.

Same principles can be practical for the business, always learn from other’s million dollar mistation, brekdown the problem and solve it via analytics and logic step, also can develop the new knowledge and theory via the experiences.  

4. The Number Effect

It's crucial to use the superiority of numbers to good effect.

When von Clausewitz discusses the effect which superiority of numbers has on war, he does so only on the basis of having stripped out all the other factors associated with strategy and tactics first. His argument is that without a good strategy and excellent tactics, we are left with nothing more than a shapeless battle in which the only distinguishing factor is the number of troops on either side. He also points out that having more men may ultimately contribute very little to the outcome of an engagement and will only do so if the numbers are great enough to counterbalance the strategy and tactics of their opponents. In other words, although it is essential to field as large a force as possible, it's crucial to use the superiority of numbers to good effect.

Business need adopt the same principle Von Clausewitz discovered: It can be very big, and it can be beautiful, but when it comes to the numbers game, the question is: are you using your resources wisely?

5. System Thinking

The truth is: we are part of a wider system that controls us more than we could ever know.

In many ways, von Clausewitz was ahead of his time, but there was one area in particular where he was light years ahead: systems thinking. Although systems theory as we know it today had yet to be defined or articulated, von Clausewitz understood war was not an isolated act. In his view, opponents in war could not regard each other as abstract entities; they were part of a wider system that included individual behaviour as well as politics. As a result, it was a relatively straightforward process to understand and model the motives of a potential enemy; all you had to do was observe. And because war was part of a larger ‘system’, it rarely broke out spontaneously nor could it spread instantaneously.

The principle is extremely practical at today’s over-complex and hyper-competitive global business environment, business can no longer survive in its own four wall surroundings,   it need shape the new eco-system to compete and collaborate at the same time, it also need craft the new busienss model via systematic thinking and holistic view. Its value chains are cross-industrial, cross-cultural silos, its influences are global and amplified via digital fabric.

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Talent Master: Insight via A Photo, A Parable and A Painting of Race Horses

“Human resources are like natural resources; they're often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they're not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves.”    ~― Ken Robinson

 

1. A Photography of  Race Horse

On 4/8, Google has celebrated the 182nd anniversary of the birth of Eadweard J Muybridge, the British photographer, by creating a "doodle" based on his ground-breaking 19th-century images of racehorses. The animated graphic celebrates Muybridge's "The Horse in Motion", a film strip-style collection of shots created using 24 cameras which capture the running habits of racehorses owned by Leland Stanford, a Californian businessman and animal breeder, it vividly capture the spirit of horse.

2. An Ancient Parable of Long-Distance Race Horse

The premium breed long race horses were mixed with other regular horses, when they were hungry, not getting fed well; when they were yelling, no one understood why; when they stretch, nobody pay attention to, until one day, the maxima (the master who can recognize racehorse) came in, selected them out via capturing their spirit, he took them back, fed them right, understood their habit and train them properly, they became the superior long race horses again! The conclusion: The world has maxima first, then come to the racehorse.

Three Takeaways from Talent Management Perspecive:

A: Not lacking of Talent, it’s a Lack of the Unique Eyes Recognize it

• The Unique Eyes identify Talent “Spirit”:

  What is spirit? It’s the character and energy, character is inbuilt, the innate self, the individual’s intelligence, sharpness and dynamism. And energy is the passion, the strength and attitude. The spirit is human’s blueprint;  like a seed, with its uniqueness & color theme. The talent master with unique eyes can identify such an enchanting human “spirit”, make a foreseable choice.

 

• The Wise Talent Master recognize talent “Voice”

 “Voice Uniquely, Think Differently”, it’s the characteristic of innovative talent, the wise talent master will understand talent deeply and become their advocate, and believe the right combination of talent and ability will instill the new energy and fresh attitude to revitalize legacy business environment.  

B.    Inspire the Innovation-Centric Recruiting Culture:

Companies have to recognize that talent comes in all shapes, colors and  sizes. The blueprint needs to be flexible and resilient. We may also need multiple definitions of what leadership is and multiple paths to power of serving.

• Recognize the New Characteristics of Business Leaders

The Talent masters need understand today's rapidly changing business environment and over-complex global atmosphere, which requires the next generation of business leaders should combine the characteristics of effective executive, creative entrepreneur and persuasive coach, well-mix the leadership influence, innovation capability and managerial capacity. The diversified talent may also include the movers and shakers, the thought leaders and the innovators who have the courage to take calculated risks or who has the passion and ability to make changes. 

• Explore the new talent pipeline

The next generation of talent management must explore the new, dynamic talent pipeline, with extension of business boundary at the era of digitization, the end to end talent pipeline is also expanding such as social channels, global platform, open stage, through audacious experiment and innovation-centric recruiting, the legacy business culture can be revitalized, and legacy business mindset can be re-energized

C. Talent Life Cycle Management

• Talent Energy/Potential Management

As we learned from the parable above, the right talent need be treated fairly, understood deeply and trained properly, it requires the culture of innovation to encourage openness, elastic managerial style to rotate the positons, multiple communication channels to let idea flow & grow and effective incentives to reward high-performance. The talent strategy & management need be well integrated into business’s strategy in catalyzing long term growth.

• The Art of Team Builder

The high-innovative team with optimal talent mix is not only composed of the top talent representing key positions and disciplines but also has the chemistry and unique problem solving capabilities  that comes from the right combination of backgrounds, styles, and perspectives.

3. A Painting of Horse

Horse is also the favorite subjets depicted another artist-Beihong’s life, his paintings melt the western & eastern styles, ancient & modern techniques, his paintings of horses, ink dripping unrestrained, riding with the wind with full spirit, to bring a fresh, strong, bold flavor.

Like these artists who truely capture the spirit of race horse, the modern talent masters need take innovative approach to master human talent, and harmonize business world with creative theme.

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Three-Step IT Investment Strategy

New MIT research used data from more than 400 global companies from 1998 to 2003.:  “The Impact of IT Investments on Profits” finds that investments companies make in IT increase profitability more than investments in advertising or R&D do.”. IT investment now is strategic imperative for forward-looking business to pursue the growth, but how to do it wisely, what’s your holistic IT investment strategy?

1.    Diagnose the Pitfalls

The study found, “however, that there was significantly more variability in the effects of IT investments than in investments in advertising or R&D. Perhaps because IT involves novel technologies, IT investments offer more room for creativity and innovation. It may be that most businesses already know how to manage advertising and R&D to their best advantage, but only some have mastered managing IT.”

• Not Focus on the Most Critical Project

 At many organizations today, IT spends most of their resources and budget on operational projects which do not provide differentiate business capabilities to compete for the future.

Therefore, to avoid such pitfalls, IT strategy need become significant component of business strategy, co-developing strategy from both business and technology will make all projects essentially business investment, to focus on business growth or cost optimization, the study also found that in general, IT investments were more effective in improving profitability by increasing revenue than by decreasing operating expenses. In fact, IT investments had a marked positive effect on revenue growth.

• Higher IT Project Failure Rate

In the United States, we spend more than $250 billion each year on IT application development, statistically, 31% of projects will be cancelled before they ever get completed., 53% of projects will cost twice as of their original estimates, overall, the success rate is less than 30%, you may read more details from  Five Ponderings why IT Project fails. 

Such a statistics may present another red light for organizations to invest large scale IT projects. ,therefore, top management need understand that project and portfolio management are key to drive many business initiatives such as strategic planning, investment priority, capital budgeting, new product development, organizational changes, M&A, etc, the businesses understand the vital importance of project management will outperform the competitors and reap the business benefits for the long term.

2.     IT Project Investment Prioritization with Guiding Policy

• Use EA as a Guide for IT Investment and Portfolio Balancing.

 In enterprise/business architecture, start with a high level capability model that describes the summary about what the company does, then business and IT leaders/ strategists should use it as an effective communication tool to identify the strategic capabilities (two or three) that differentiate their company from competitors. It will show the gaps and overlaps, then you may question weather the new initiative can help fill up the gap or reduce the waste for the overlaps. Leveraging technology to improve these key areas will likely to have the greatest business impact

• Project Prioritization Criteria:

A long-term roadmap that shows where we want to be and why is needed. We need to ensure we're investing in the right projects. This focus will free up money in every facet of IT and create headroom for IT innovation and business growth. Work to simplify your existing technical debt using the capability model and roadmap as a guide.

Primarily there are five critical factors that would help rank each project in the portfolio;

A> Alignment (with company strategy) score based on balanced scorecard: Strategic Fit & Importance.

B> Market and/or Revenue Growth : Potential growth opportunity or market entry

C> Operational Efficiency : Process standardization/improvement , Business agility improvement (supports new product, price changes, scale, acquisition etc) , Improved reliability by mitigating business risk

D> Risk score based on risk factors such as potential project risk & its mitigation costs : Governance Risk/Compliance area on level of risk and ability to address risks , HR (of Business/IT) capability to deliver, ability of business to manage change

E> ROI factors: Reward to Company : cost/benefit , payback period.

• Simplicity is the Key:

 For non-strategic, generic capabilities, the focus should be on simplification to remove complexity and cost. For technology, that means removing custom applications and processes wherever possible.

3.    Best Practices to Prioritize & Rationalize IT Project

 The prioritization of the portfolio is an ongoing process. Decisions must be reevaluated periodically (6~12 months or shorter) in order to confirm the assumptions we used to prioritize our projects.  Be careful to distinguish between best practices and the prioritization

The prioritization roadmap is a methodology that every CIO or IT organization need create according to their own realities and capacities.

A good practice, for example, involve the participation of users, to have related experience, or have a scientific methodology to standardize corporate financial analysis as "investment, profit and rate of return of the projects”, and to have vision and strategy deployed in short-term and long-term defined including its level of importance among them, to have a minimum IT budget for "investments" (politics related about the investment), etc. Some variables used to prioritize the projects are:

1) Risk involved: Identify risks that deadlines are not met, the issue related if the project can not be easily accepted by staff, flow cash capacity from the corporate capacity or level of trust with suppliers to provide the service. This will require that each organization believes or create its own risk matrix

2) Conductor: Mandatory, critical, optional. A measure whether you should do it without looking at the costs.

3) Size of the cost ($): not only the amount but the flow at the time of disbursement

4) Size of profit ($):not only the amount but the flow at the time or the cost ($) if we do not do it (such as meeting regulatory actions)

5) Return of investment

6) Approved budget ($).

7) The time to complete the Implementation (post-training and post adjustment period)

8) Time to reach equilibrium (cost = benefit)

9) Time required by users to implement the project

10) Alignment of the project with the vision and strategies. A precise identification of objectives that the project will support

11) Staff needed to implement the project (numbers, skills, timeframe, outsourcing)

12) Staff impacted: (in IT and in the user area)

13) Customers Impacted (in numbers, sales amount and the so on)

14) Opportunity / Innovation: Sometimes could be projects that seek to "evaluate" a potential product or a technology solution to a problem (prototype). These are usually projects that seek to place the business into a new vantage point (looking for the “jump”).

15) Suppliers (skills and resources to execute)

16) Each variable must have a scale and weight. So a project is reflected in a number that will facilitate prioritization. If a project does not have the "priority" we expected may be due to an error in processing or failing to consider a new variable or because our feeling was not right.

17) Evaluate each of the variables from the perspective of original value (value that was assumed when the project was prioritized), current value (the value that considers the current scenario with the current costs) projected value (the value considering a conservative scenario according we expect in the future –as example, changes of prices-). The comparisons help to review progress, deviations, and make new decisions.

Going back to MIT’s study: one of the many questions that arise is, what percentage of the overall IT spend should be spent on operations and what percent should be spent on development. The research shows a mixed bag of results, but the more sophisticated and mature IT shops tend to spend about 65% on operations. Some of the more advanced IT-focused companies have the ops portion down to 40%.

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CIO’s Innovation Strategy

The annual global InnovationLeadership Study just released by Capgemini Consulting and the IESE business school., based on a survey of 260 innovation executives around the world, find that only 24% of the respondents think they have an “effective organizational alignment of innovation efforts. The study concludes that “the absence of a well-articulated innovation strategy is by far the most important constraint for companies to reach their innovation targets.” It proposes that “there is a need for innovation strategy development in a more bottom-up manner,” and “large organizations create so much distance between the executives and those that are tasked to innovate that a disconnect exists between them.”

At Good Strategy, Bad Strategy we learned, there are three steps to craft good strategy:

1.     Diagnose Organization’s innovation Barriers:

·         Miscommunication or Lack of Communication:

Executives and senior leadership teams need reduce the level of disconnect between leaders and employees.

·         Culture Inertia:

Employees don’t have the sense of urgency to adapt to the changes, many legacy businesses come with legacy mindset, the old way to do the things, lack of three elements to spark innovation: vision, passion and progression.

·         Lack of effective Innovation Process and KPI Metrics

Traditional top down style of organizational structure may only encourage top-down one way strategy making and innovation process, it may not be effective for business to capture the disruptive technology innovation or emerging marketing trend, and missing the right sets of KPI metrics may further discourage the innovation effort and influence.

2.     Choice with Guidelines

·         Innovative Leadership Team

“The spirit of organization is from Top” ~Peter Drucker, the innovative leadership team may set the right tone to lead enterprise wide innovation management. The innovative leadership team should well mix the innovator personas: movers and shakers, the thought leaders, critical thinkers, experimenters, reframers, in order to inspire the new thinking and encourage the new way to do things.

·         Culture of Innovation

Employees will be motivated to see innovation via thousand of lenses, always encourage to ask 3D questions to spark creativity, and cultivate the culture of innovation

CIOs as innovation leaders may face the innovation dilemma, however, to overcome the obstacle, be audacious, not only craft the good innovation strategy, but also be the purposeful leaders to cultivate seven habits of innovation leader, to drive the business transformation and innovation agenda.

·         Agile Structure to cultivate Innovation ecosystem

Innovation process doesn’t need be perfect, but should be easy to start, exciting and energizing, attract the “raw” talents, to capture the “raw” fresh ideas

3.     Take Cohesive Actions to Implement Innovation

The study concludes there’re five key success factors for innovation life cycle management: innovation leadership, innovation culture, innovation process, innovation strategy and innovation governance. The cohesive actions may include:

1). Well align innovation strategy with business strategy such as business growth or cost optimization, well integrate people, process and technology seamlessly to build up the open platform for experimenting innovation, allow calculated risks, tolerant failures.

2) Well orchestrating the effective governance framework to manage innovation, yes, innovation can be managed to unleash its business potentials, and set up the right set of KPIs to measure the result

3) Amplify innovation project influence, to make innovation part of business DNA, either via formal CoE, Innovation or informal world of mouth, innovation is a journey, not a one time project.

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