Beyond Automation

Article from Harvard Business Review by Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby

Some pointers that I've got are:

Augmentation -  It stands in stark contrast to the automation strategies that efficiency-minded enterprises have pursued in the past. Automation starts with a baseline of what people do in a given job and subtracts from that. It deploys computers to chip away at the tasks humans perform as soon as those tasks can be codified. Aiming for increased automation promises cost savings but limits us to thinking within the parameters of work that is being accomplished today.

Augmentation, in contrast, means starting with what humans do today and figuring out how that work could be deepened rather than diminished by a greater use of machines. Some thoughtful knowledge workers see this clearly. Camille Nicita, for example, is the CEO of Gongos, a company in metropolitan Detroit that helps clients gain consumer insights—a line of work that some would say is under threat as big data reveals all about buying behavior. Nicita concedes that sophisticated decision analytics based on large data sets will uncover new and important insights. But, she says, that will give her people the opportunity to go deeper and offer clients “context, humanization, and the ‘why’ behind big data.” Her shop will increasingly “go beyond analysis and translate that data in a way that informs business decisions through synthesis and the power of great narrative.” Fortunately, computers aren’t very good at that sort of thing.

Intelligent machines, Nicita thinks—and this is the core belief of an augmentation strategy—do not usher people out the door, much less relegate them to doing the bidding of robot overlords. In some cases these machines will allow us to take on tasks that are superior—more sophisticated, more fulfilling, better suited to our strengths—to anything we have given up. In other cases the tasks will simply be different from anything computers can do well. In almost all situations, however, they will be less codified and structured; otherwise computers would already have taken them over.

Five Steps to Consider

Step up

Your best strategy may be to head for still higher intellectual ground. There will always be jobs for people who are capable of more big-picture thinking and a higher level of abstraction than computers are. In essence this is the same advice that has always been offered and taken as automation has encroached on human work: Let the machine do the things that are beneath you, and take the opportunity to engage with higher-order concerns.

If stepping up is your chosen approach, you will probably need a long education. A master’s degree or a doctorate will serve you well as a job applicant. Once inside an organization, your objective must be to stay broadly informed and creative enough to be part of its ongoing innovation and strategy efforts. Ideally you’ll aspire to a senior management role and thus seize the opportunities you identify - “people who can go really deep in their particular area of expertise and also go really broad and have that kind of curiosity about the overall organization and how their particular piece of the pie fits into it.” That’s good guidance for any knowledge worker who wants to step up: Start thinking more synthetically—in the old sense of that term. Find ways to rely on machines to do your intellectual spadework, without losing knowledge of how they do it.

Step aside

Stepping up may be an option for only a small minority of the labor force. But a lot of brain work is equally valuable and also cannot be codified. Stepping aside means using mental strengths that aren’t about purely rational cognition but draw on what the psychologist Howard Gardner has called our “multiple intelligences.” You might focus on the “interpersonal” and “intrapersonal” intelligences—knowing how to work well with other people and understanding your own interests, goals, and strengths.

If stepping aside is your strategy, you need to focus on your uncodifiable strengths, first discovering them and then diligently working to heighten them. In the process you should identify other masters of the tacit trade you’re pursuing and find ways to work with them, whether as collaborator or apprentice. You may have to develop a greater respect for the intelligences you have beyond IQ, which decades of schooling might well have devalued. These, too, can be deliberately honed—they are no more or less God-given than your capacity for calculus.

Step in

Those capable of stepping in know how to monitor and modify the work of computers. Taxes may increasingly be done by computer, but smart accountants look out for the mistakes that automated programs—and the programs’ human users—often make.

Here you might ask, Just who is augmenting whom (or what) in this situation? It’s a good moment to emphasize that in an augmentation environment, support is mutual. The human ensures that the computer is doing a good job and makes it better. This is the point being made by all those people who encourage more STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. They envision a work world largely made up of stepping-in positions. But if this is your strategy, you’ll also need to develop your powers of observation, translation, and human connection.

Step narrowly

This approach involves finding a specialty within your profession that wouldn’t be economical to automate. 

Those who step narrowly find such niches and burrow deep inside them. They are hedgehogs to the stepping-up foxes among us. Although most of them have the benefit of a formal education, the expertise that fuels their earning power is gained through on-the-job training—and the discipline of focus. If this is your strategy, start making a name for yourself as the person who goes a mile deep on a subject an inch wide. That won’t mean you can’t also have other interests, but professionally you’ll have a very distinct brand. How might machines augment you? You’ll build your own databases and routines for keeping current, and connect with systems that combine your very specialized output with that of others.

Step forward

Finally, stepping forward means constructing the next generation of computing and AI tools. 

Stepping forward means bringing about machines’ next level of encroachment, but it involves work that is itself highly augmented by software.  If this is your strategy, you’ll reach the top of your field if you can also think outside the box, perceive where today’s computers fall short, and envision tools that don’t yet exist. Someday, perhaps, even a lot of software development will be automated; but as Bill Gates recently observed, programming is “safe for now.”

Why Employers Love Augmentation (or Should)

For augmentation to work, employers must be convinced that the combination of humans and computers is better than either working alone. That realization will dawn as it becomes increasingly clear that enterprise success depends much more on constant innovation than on cost efficiency. Employers have tended to see machines and people as substitute goods: If one is more expensive, it makes sense to swap in the other. But that makes sense only under static conditions, when we can safely assume that tomorrow’s tasks will be the same as today’s.

Yours,

Something Small Thinking Big

Embracing agile

Article from Harvard Business Review by Darrell K. Rigby, Jeff Sutherland, and Hirotaka Takeuchi

Some pointers that I've got are:
1. Learn how agile really works
2. Understand where agile does or does not work
3. Start small and let the word spread
4. Allow 'Master' teams to customise their practices
5. Practice agile at the top
6. Destroy the barriers to agile behaviours

On Learn how agile really works

Some executives seem to associate agile with anarchy (everybody does what he or she wants to), whereas others take it to mean "doing what I say, only faster". But agile is neither. It comes in several varieties, which have much in common but emphasize slightly different things. They include scrum, which emphasizes creative and adaptive teamwork in solving complex problems; lean development, which focuses on the continual elimination of waste; and kanban, which concentrates on reducing lead times and the amount of work in process.

The fundamentals of scrum are relatively simple. To tackle an opportunity, the organization forms and empowers a small team, usually three to nine people, most of whom are assigned full time. The team is cross functional and includes all the skills necessary to complete its tasks. It manages itself and is strictly accountable for every aspect of the work.

The team's "initiative owner" (also known as a product owner) is ultimately responsible for delivering value to customers (including internal customers and future users) and to the business. The person in this role usually comes from a business function and divides his or her time between working with the team and coordinating with key stakeholders: customers, senior executives, and business managers. The initiative owner may use a technique such as design thinking or crowd-sourcing to build a comprehensive "portfolio backlog" of promising opportunities. Then he or she continually and ruthlessly rank-orders that list according to the latest estimates of value to internal or external customers and to the company.

The initiative owner doesn't tell the team who should do what or how long tasks will take. Rather, the team creates a simple road map and plans in detail only those activities that won't change before execution. Its members break the highest-ranked tasks into small modules, decide how much work the team will take on and how to accomplish it, develop a clear definition of "done", and then start building working versions o the product in short cycles (less than a month) known as sprints. A process facilitator (often a trained scrum master) guides the process. This person protects the team from distractions and helps it put its collective intelligence to work.

The process is transparent to everyone. Team members hold brief daily "stand up" meetings to review progress and identify roadblocks. They resolve disagreements through experimentation and feedback rather than endless debates or appeals to authority. They test small working prototypes of part or all of the offering with a few customers for short periods of time. If customers get excited, a prototype may be released immediately, even if some senior executive isn't a fan, or others think it needs more bells and whistles. The team then brainstorms ways to improve future cycles and prepares to attack the next top priority.

Compared with traditional management approaches, agile offers a number of major benefits, all of which have been studied and documented. It increases team productivity and employee satisfaction. It minimizes the waste inherent in redundant meetings, repetitive planning, excessive documentation, quality defects, and low-value product features. By improving visibility and continually adapting to customers' changing priorities, agile improves customer engagement and satisfaction, brings the most valuable products and features to market faster and more predictably, and reduces risk. By engaging team members from multiple disciplines as collaborative peers, it broadens organizational experience and builds mutual trust and respect. Finally, by dramatically reducing the time squandered on micromanaging functional projects, it allows senior managers to devote themselves more fully to higher-value work that only they can do: creating and adjusting the corporate vision; prioritizing strategic strategic initiatives; simplifying and focusing work; assigning the right people to tasks; increasing cross-functional collaboration; and removing impediments to progress.

On Understand where agile does or does not work

Agile is most effective and easiest to implement under conditions commonly found in software innovation: The problem to be solved is complex; solutions are initially unknown, and product requirements will most likely change; the work can be modularized; close collaborations with end users (and rapidly feedback from them) is feasible; and creative teams will typically outperform command and control groups.

In our experience, these conditions exist for many product development functions, marketing projects, strategic-planning activities, supply-chain challenges, and resource allocation decisions. They are less common in routine operations such as plant maintenance, purchasing, sales calls, and accounting. And because agile requires training, behavioural change, and often new information technologies, executives must decide whether the anticipated payoffs will justify the effort and expenses of a transition.

Agile innovation also depends on having a cadre of eager participants. One of its core principles is "Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they needs, and trust them to get the job done.: When the majority of a company, a function, or a team chooses to adopt agile methodologies, leaders may need to press the holdouts to follow suit or even replace them. But it's better to enlist passionate volunteers than to coerce resisters.

On Start small and let the word spread

Large companies typically launch change programs as massive efforts. But the most successful introductions of agile usually start small. They often begin in IT, where software developers are likely to be familiar with the principles. Then agile might spread to another function, with the original practitioners acting as coaches. Each success seems to create a group of passionate evangelists who can hardly wait to tell others in the organization how well agile works.

On Allow "Master" teams to customize their practices

Mastering agile innovation is similar. Before beginning to modify or customize agile, a person or team will benefit from practicing the widely used methodologies that have delivered success in thousands of companies.

Over time, experienced practitioners should be permitted to customize agile practices. For example, one principles holds that teams should keep their progress and impediments constantly visible. Originally, the most popular way of doing this was by manually advancing colored sticky notes from the "to-do" column to "doing" to "done" on large whiteboards. Many teams are still devoted to this practice and enjoy having nonmembers visit their team rooms to view and discuss progress. But others are turning to software programs and computer screens to minimize input time and allow the information to be shared simultaneously in multiple locations.

A key principle guides this type of improvisation: If a team wants to modify particular practices, it should experiment and track the results to make sure that the changes are improving rather than reducing customer satisfaction, work velocity, and team morale.

On Practice agile at the top

Some C-suite activities are not suited to agile methodologies (Routine and predictable tasks - such as performance assessments, press interviews, and visits to plants, customers and suppliers - fall into this category). But many, and arguably the most important are. They include strategy development and resource allocation, cultivating breakthrough innovations, and improving organizational collaboration. Senior executives who come together as an agile team and learn to apply the discipline to these activities achieve far-reaching benefits. Their own productivity and morale improve. They speak the language of the teams they are empowering. They experience common challenges and learn how to overcome them. They recognise an stop behaviours that impede agile teams. They learn to simplify and focus work. Results improve, increasing confidence and engagement throughout the organization.

On Destroy the barriers to agile behaviours

Research has found that more than 70% of agile practitioners report tension between their teams and the rest of the organization. Little wonder: They are following different road maps and moving at different speed.

Get everyone on the same page - Individual teams focusing on small parts of large, complex problems need to see, and work from, the same list of enterprise priorities - even if not all the teams responsible for those priorities are using agile processes.

Don't change structures right away; change roles instead - Many executives assume that creating more cross-functional teams will necessitate major changes in organizational structure. That is rarely true. Highly empowered cross-functional teams do, by definition, need some form of matrix management, but that requires primarily that different disciplines learn how to work together simultaneously rather than separately and sequentially.

Name only one boss for each decision - People can have multiple bosses, but decisions cannot. In an agile operating model it must be crystal clear who is responsible for commissioning a cross-functional team, selecting and replacing team members, appointing the team leader, and approving the team's decisions. An agile leadership team often authorises a senior executive to identify the critical issues, design processes for addressing them, and appoint a single owner for each innovation initiative. Other senior leaders must avoid second-guessing or overturning the owner's decisions. It's fine to provide guidance and assistance, but if you don't like the results, change the initiative owner, don't incapacitate him or her.

Focus on teams, not individuals - Studies by the MIT Centre for Collective Intelligence and others show that although the intelligence of individuals affects team performance, the team's collective intelligence is even more important. It's also far easier to change. Agile teams use process facilitators to continually improve their collective intelligence - for example, by clarifying roles, teaching conflict resolution techniques, and ensuring that team members contribute equally. Shifting metrics from output and utilization rates (how busy people are) to business outcomes and team happiness (how valuable and engaged people are) also helps, as do recognition and reward systems that weight team results higher than individual efforts.

Lead with questions, not orders - General George S. Patton Jr, famously advised leaders never to tell people how to do things: "Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." Rather than give orders, leaders in agile organizations learn to guide with questions, such as "What do you recommend?" and "How could we test that?" This management style helps functional experts grow into general mangers, and it helps enterprise strategists and organizations evolve from silos battling for power and resources into collaborative cross-functional teams.

Yours,
Something Small Thinking Big

Increase your return on failure

Article from Harvard Business Review by Julian Birkinshaw and Martine Haas

Some pointers that I've got are:
1. Step 1: Learn from every failure
2. Step 2: Share the lessons
3. Step 3: Review your pattern of failure

On Step 1: Learn from every failure

• Begin by getting people to reflect on projects or initiatives that disappointed. Of course, this doesn't come naturally: Reviewing past problems isn't just tedious; it's painful. Most of us would prefer to invest our time looking forward, not back. 
• When something doesn't go as planned, it's an opportunity to challenge your default beliefs and adjust accordingly. We recommend spelling out what the project has taught you about each of these things: customers and market dynamics; your organization's strategy, culture and processes; yourself and your team; and future trends.
• These insights, of course, are the assets. Our exercise also has you compile a list of the associated liabilities - the projects direct costs in time and money, any external costs (reputation, for example), and any internal indirect costs (such as excessive consumption of management attention). 

On Step 2: Share the lessons

• While it's useful to reflect on individual failures, the real payoff comes when you spread the lessons across the organisation. As one executive commented, "You need to build a review cycle where this is fed into a broader conversation." When the information, ideas, and opportunities for improvement gained from an unsuccessful project in one business area are passed on to another, their benefits are magnified. 
• Shared learning also increases the likelihood of future initiatives. "The biggest mistake you can make as a leader is to shoot the messenger and bury the bad news," one executive noted. By reflecting on the positives, you build trust and goodwill and clear the pathway for others to take action on risker ideas.
• We recommend bringing senior leaders (across a unit or the whole organization) together on a regular basis to talk about their respective failures. These reviews work best when they are fast and to the point; takes place frequently, through good times and bad; and are forward looking, with an emphasis on learning. We call them Triple F reviews (Fast, Frequent, Forward looking).

On Step 3: Review your pattern of failure

• The third step is to take a bird's eye view of the organization and ask whether your overall approach to failure is working. Are you learning from every unsuccessful endeavour? Are you sharing those lessons across the organization? And are they helping you improve your strategy and execution?

Yours,
Something Small Thinking Big

The road to innovation - Organisations must first ask themselves what they want to achieve

This post came out from The Straits Times (20 February 2016)
Title - The road to innovation - Organisations must first ask themselves what they want to achieve

Some pointers that I've got are:
1. Keep in touch with our customers' needs and industry shifts to ensure that we have a pulse on what is of real value to our customers and organisation.
2. Have an open mind. Be enriched by the diversity that different people, environment and life experiences bring. Stay curious and keep our minds stimulated. This richness of input will create a corresponding richness of output in our thinking.
3. Have a reasonable margin of risk tolerance to fuel the spirit of adventure in us. If we only want to stick with the safe and proven, we will never venture into the unknown and discover exciting opportunities ahead.
4. Question old assumptions. Assumptions that worked in the past cannot remain inviolable when circumstances have changed. We need to break the frame created by old assumptions and avoid groupthink. Question orthodoxy and think afresh.
5. The ability to understand linkages between things seemingly unrelated is what drives innovative thinking. This depends on the diversity of the ideas and experiences that we expose ourselves to.
6. Finally, be enthusiastic about innovation. Passion and openness to others' ideas will in turn enthuse and encourage them to think differently. Ideas breed ideas and success breeds success.

Yours,
Something Small Thinking Big

The innovative power of criticism

Article from Harvard Business Review by Roberto Verganti

Some pointers that I've got are:
1. The art of criticism
2. Individual reflection
3. Sparring partners
4. Radical circles
5. Outsiders

On The art of criticism

• Whether for products, services, processes, or business models, two levels of innovation are possible: improvements and new directions
• Improvements are novel solutions that better satisfy existing definitions of value. Whether incremental or radical, they address problems that are already widely recognised in the marketplace.
• In contrasts, new directions arise from reinterpreting the problems worth addressing. They redefine what customers value. 
• In order to find an exploit the opportunities made possible by big changes in technology or society, we need to explicitly question assumptions about what is good or valuable and what is not - and then, through reflection, come up with a new lens to examine innovation ideas. Such questioning and reflection characterise the art of criticism.

On Individual reflection

• Ask members of the group to spend time thinking about one or more proposals for products or services or business models. To ensure that they would focus on new directions rather than mere improvements, give them a strict directive: Solutions should be based on brand-new concepts of value. To make the new direction explicit, each proposal should contain an arrow indicating the change from the existing value proposition to the proposed one.
• This approach differs from popular innovation methods in several way.
• First, the staff are not asked to start with the insights of customers or other outsiders. They start with their own. We all sense changes in our environment, and we all have hunches, both conscious and subconscious, about how the world might become better. We often keep these personal hypotheses private. So, get the members to make their hypotheses explicit. Once made explicit and then challenged, those intuitions would become precious raw materials for creating new visions. And the process would combat the natural tendency of individuals to let their subconscious intuitions affect how they perceive the insights of others. This enables the leader to more clearly see and objectively consider visions that would ultimately have been proposed to him.
• Second, everyone reflect alone rather than as a team. This allowed people to dig deep into their own insights and not dilute or withhold them, as they might in a group brainstorming session. It gave each person freedom to perform the task as he or she saw fit - relying on a particular analytical framework, on data, or simply on intuition.
• Third, people have longer time for reflection, such as one month. They are expected to keep performing their regular jobs, but the time was sufficient for each individual to sketch out thoughts, let them percolate for a few days, and then refine them and add new ones. This is especially important for coming up with provocative or outlandish hypotheses - those that are often so blurred in the early stages that they can be quickly dismissed. 

On Sparring partners

• In the second step each person subjects his or her vision to the criticism of a trusted peer. The peer acts like a sparring partner, providing a protected environment in which the person can dare to share a wild or half baked hypothesis without being dismissed. 
• How can you find a sparring partner who shares your general vision? You needn't have had a previous relationship. Nor must companies rely on serendipity. The odds can be improved with a sort of speed dating process whereby people with similar visions can find each other and agree to work together to polish their ideas. After step one, in which individuals reflect independently on possible directions, invite them to a meeting and ask them to briefly illustrate their ideas, which can be posted on a wall. Then have each person choose another's idea that he or she would like to explore. If more than one person chooses the same direction, ask them to a second and if necessary, a third choice. 

On Radical circles

• In step three these promising hypotheses are subjected to deeper criticism through discussion in a group of 10 to 20 people who have envisioned other new directions. Its purpose is not to decide which hypotheses are right or wrong; it is to judge why and how they are different, what important underlying insights might have been overlooked, and whether a value proposition even more formidable than all the hypotheses might be found.
• This exercise, which can be held in an intense two or three day workshop or over the course of four weeks, needs to be conducted carefully so that it is constructive, not destructive. Clashes should push people to dig deeper and identify more innovative spaces, and shouldn't constrain thinking or compromise good ideas.
• The circle should include people with a variety of background, perspectives and personalities. 
• You can keep the process positive and creative by having the radical circle focus initially on where everyone believes the company should not go and who its enemies are. Often members can converge more easily on what they dislike than on what they like, and a common enemy is a powerful incentive to come together and articulate a new direction.
• Then contrasts the visions and try to combine them, two at a time. Are there places where they overlap? Are there strong elements of the individual visions that didn't occur to others? 

On Outsiders

• A radical circle may converge on one or a few possible directions, which should then be subjected to the criticism of outsiders - step four. Remember that, unlike open innovation approaches, involving outsiders is not intended to generate new ideas. Rather, it is meant to raise good questions - to challenge the innovative direction you propose in order to help you strengthen it. In addition to targeted users, outsiders should include experts from far flung fields with novel perspectives. Their ability to find meaning in trends that might not occur to the product's users. 

Yours,
Something Small Thinking Big

Implement change management successfully with these tips

This post came out from The Straits Times (2 March 2012)
Title - Get the right strategy - Implement change management successfully with these tips

Some pointers that I've got are:
1. Questions to ask
2. Define the change
3. Drive it with the right sponsorship
4. Prepare for change at local levels
5. Reinforce behaviours that support the change
6. Communicate

On Questions to ask

• Where do we want to go?
• How ready are we to get started?
• What practical steps do we need to take?
• How do we manage the journey?
• How do we keep moving forward?

On Define the change

• Know and understand down to the last detail what is it to be achieved and how. Every person involved and impacted by the implementation must have the same understanding of why and what is being done. There should be no room for interpretation.

On Drive it with the right sponsorship

• Ensure that the most influential employees jump onto the change bandwagon along with the leader. Being trustworthy and liked, they demonstrate the value and benefit of a leader's change management initiatives. The right people on board will enhance acceptance of the concept and will be catalysts in driving change throughout the organisation.

On Prepare for change at local levels

• Find out who is getting impacted. Manage the people before, during and after the transition of the change. If the plans are not accepted, even the greatest of leaders face failure. Get acceptance by creating channels for employee expression and participation. Engaging all employees is crucial.
• Also, gear up to educate consumers about the impact that this change will bring about in the company, the evolution of products and services if any, their customer experience and also the time-frame that the change is likely to take place.
• Your customers, along with your employees, are your biggest assets. Ensure they are not caught unaware by changes you plan to implement.

On Reinforce behaviours that support the change

• It's about doing the right thing and then making it easy for others to follow. Simplicity is vital for people to adapt a new and unique way of thinking and working.
• Acknowledging efforts to enable change is equally important. Once leaders recognise that employees are aiding change management initiatives, these quickly catch on and get adopted throughout the organisation.

On Communicate

• Leaders must spread the message and its importance right from its inception till the drive for change is complete. It is important for leaders and employees to constantly keep their eye on the ball and not lose sight of the objectives.

Yours,
Something Small Thinking Big

Handling leadership transitions

This post came out from The Straits Times (29 October 2015)
Title - Handling leadership transitions - How companies can make a smooth transition

Some pointers that I've got are:
1. Vision and execution of an eagle
2. Bravery and risk-taking character of a lion
3. Diligence and toughness of an ox
4. Connection and empathy of a human

On Vision and execution of an eagle

• An eagle's vision to develop a compelling shared vision and make it happen. Many leaders have great vision, but few can make them shared.
• To ground the change, vision alone is not sufficient. It should not be top-down, but instead build on strong consensus reached with stakeholders.
• But this is easier said than done, especially if there are entrenched old habits, vested interests and different ideologies.

On Bravery and risk-taking character of a lion

• Instead of getting demoralised after experiencing some setbacks and limited successes, great change leaders will not throw in the towel easily. Instead, with their lion-like bravery and strength, they will overcome any challenges in their paths.
• Unlike their weaker counterparts, they are not easily intimidated and will continue to press forward, even when there are real and tangible risks to their reputation, fortune or life.
• Despite the many challenges, highly effective change leaders are fearless in their pursuit of changes, and willing to take enormous risks to complete the mission.

On Diligence and toughness of an ox

• To succeed in this difficult and tough journey, great change leaders must demonstrate the tenacity of the ox's diligence and toughness to work continually until the mission is accomplished. 

On Connection and empathy of a human

• Many changes are not successful not because of poor vision, or lack of diligence or toughness on the part of change leaders. Instead, it is often due to a lack of connection and empathy, especially when change is pushed down quickly with little engagement and communication, creating superficial support, background resistance and pushback. 
• To connect with stakeholders, change leaders must strive to build genuine and rich relationships with them. The process must be nurtured through long term engagement and care. In times of difficult and unfair treatment, change leaders must also have the courage to stand up and lead the pack out of unfavorable situations. 

Yours,
Something Small Thinking Big

How to embrace complex change

Article from Harvard Business Review by Linda Brimm

Some pointers that I've got are:
A framework for thinking about change and involves navigating through the Seven C's

1. Complexity

• People may felt overwhelmed by the number of variables to consider. Some respond by seeking simplicity and, as a result, either revert to the stable status quo (which stunts growth) or ignore the problematic aspects of the change to make the decision easier (but not necessarily wiser). 
• Both coping mechanisms are counterproductive. To kick off a successful change effort, you must embrace its complex dynamics. Take careful inventory of all the factors at play by thinking about them on your own, talking to affected parties, and seeking third-party counsel.

2. Clarity

• You have to fully understand, organize, and prioritise all the factors to reduce your anxiety about them. The clearer you are about what's most important to you, the less anxious you feel, and the easier it is to find even greater clarity. This task requires deep reflection along with conversations with the right external resources. You should rely on people in your network who will listen without judgement and will set aside their own preferences and biases to help you weigh the pros and cons of the change. 

3. Confidence

• An executive must feel capable of managing the change while realizing that many challenges can't be predicted or controlled. You want just the right amount of confidence. Too much, and you risk missing key or newly emerging information. Too little, and you'll be paralyzed in the face of the difficulties inherent in the change process. 
• Belief in oneself is mostly conditioned by life history, but it can be facilitated by small actions, such as connecting with someone who offers personal support, resolving even minor problems associated with the change, or envisioning a successful outcome. This positive outlook is critical to maintaining the energy required for the remaining C's in the cycle.

4. Creativity

• Innovation is key to any successful change effort. When confronted with problems - early or late, large or small, expected or unexpected - you must find creative but realistic solutions, adapting strategies used in the past and developing new ones. Again, look to trusted members of your network and seek out new contacts with relevant experience to test your ideas and help you generate solutions. 

5. Commitment

• Once you're ready to commit to a good, realistic course of action and implement it to the best of your ability, you need to close off other options - including escape - and move forward. This is often the hardest step, bu there can be no change without it. It is helpful to think about this decision not as right or wrong but as a different path. You're no longer weighing the pros and cons of the decision or second-guessing it. You're working to make it successful. 

6. Consolidation

• This phase involves letting go of the previous situation so that new possibilities can arise. Some aspects of your old identity must be set aside or abandoned as you adapt. People at a new company who use 'we' to refer to their former employer have not yet consolidated the change; 'we' should mean the current team.
• Some individuals get through this stage by focusing not on what they've lost but on what they've gained. They regard change as developmental - something that brings them closer to a 'true self' or to possibilities they might now achieve. Surprisingly, anchors in your past daily life - even as minor as familiar foods - may help provide a stable basis for safe experimentation with your new identity. 

7. Change

• The final step in the process is living into the change, savouring its positive outcomes while dealing with any unintended consequences or new challenges that arise. This is't a static state, of course. You must also be on the lookout for new opportunities that may lead to your next change effort. 

Yours,
Something Small Thinking Big

Design Thinking Comes of Age

Article from Harvard Business Review by Jon Kolko

Some pointers that I've got are:
1. What is a design-centric culture?

• Focus on users' experiences, especially their emotional ones. To build empathy with users, a design-centric organisation empowers employees to observe behaviour and draw conclusions about what people want and need. Those conclusions are tremendously hard to express in quantitative language. Instead, organisations that "get" design use emotional language (words that concern desires, aspiration, engagement and experience) to describe products and users. Team members discuss the emotional resonance of a value proposition as much as they discuss utility and product requirements. 
• Create models to examine complex problems. Design thinking, first used to make physical objects, is increasingly being applied to complex, intangible issues, such as how a customer experience a service. Regardless of the context, design thinkers tend to use physical models, also known as design artifacts, to explore, define, and communicate. Those models - primarily diagrams and sketches, supplement and in some cases replace the spreadsheets, specifications and other documents that have come to define the traditional organisational environment. They add a fluid dimension to the exploration of complexity, allowing for nonlinear thought when tackling nonlinear problems. 
• Use prototypes to explore potential solutions. In design-centric organisations, you'll typically see prototypes of new ideas, new products, and new services scattered throughout offices and meeting rooms. Whereas diagrams such as customer journey maps explore the problem space, prototypes explore the solution space. They may be digital, physical, or diagrammatic, but in all cases they are a way to communicate ideas. The habit of publicly displaying rough prototypes hints at an open-minded culture, one that values exploration and experimentation. Design-centric companies aren't shy about tinkering with ideas in a public forum and tend to iterate quickly on prototypes. 
• Tolerate failure. A design culture is nurturing. It doesn't encourage failure, but the iterative nature of the design process recognizes that it's rare to get things the first time. Employees in every aspect of the business must realize that they can take social risks - putting forth half baked ideas, for instance, without losing face or experiencing punitive repercussions.
• Exhibit thoughtful restraint. Many products built on an emotional value proposition are simpler than competitors' offerings. This restraint grows out of deliberate decisions about what the product should do and, just as important, what it should not do. By removing features, a company offers customers a clear, simple experience. 

2. What are the challenges?

• Accepting more ambiguity. Design doesn't conform easily to estimates. It is difficult if not impossible to understand how much value will be delivered through a better experience or to calculate the return on an investment in creativity. 
• Embracing risk. Transformative innovation is inherently risky. It involves inferences and leaps of faith. If something's hasn't been done before, there's no way to guarantee its outcome. Leaders need to create a culture that allows people to take chances and move forward without a complete, logical understanding of a problem.
• Resetting expectations. As corporate leaders become aware of the power of design, many view design thinking as a solution to all their woes. Designers, enjoying their new level of strategic influence, often reinforce that impression. Design, however, do not solve all problems. It helps people and organisations cut through complexity. It is great for innovation and works extremely well for imaging the future. But it's not the right set of tools for optimizing, streamlining, or otherwise operating a stable business. Additionally, even if expectations are set appropriately, they must be aligned around a realistic timeline - culture changes slowly in large organizations. 

Yours,
Something Small Thinking Big

A successful leader looks for ways to make changes easier to accept and meaningful for his people

This post came out from The Straits Times (7 October 2011)
Title - Leaders Champion Change

Some pointers that I've got are:
1. Sell more than tell
2. Turn in to WII-FM
3. Work through 'head grapes'
4. Break change into bite-sized pieces
5. Build positive momentum

On Sell more than tell

• "Telling" someone what is going to happen is very different from "selling" him the idea. By selling, I mean looking for ways to get people emotionally committed or to embrace the change.
• You need to tell stories, paint a vision of a better future and engage the positive emotions of the people. Help them to stay focused on the benefits rather than the costs to them personally. 
• Understand that people need time to adjust to and to accept the change. You must work to inspire buy-in instead of simply asking for compliance.

On Turn in to WII-FM

• WII-FM - Wht Is In It for Me?
• Leaders must help their people find the reasons and incentives to change. 
• People don't resist change, they resist being changed.
• People don't resist change if it provides immediate positive consequences to them.
• People don't resist their own ideas, so get them to suggest the changes needed.
• Leaders know that people are generally more willing to do things that bring personal benefit than they are to do things that benefit the organization. You must take a pragmatic, not a cynical or negative view of human nature. See people for who they are and work to adjust your strategy to go with - not against - their natural drives.

On Work Through 'head grapes'

• The people whom others listen to, and therefore influence the company grapevine are called the 'head grapes'. The 'head grapes' have more personal influence within certain employee groups than others do. 
• Understand that leadership is about trust and relationship, it is not really about position or power. Recognizing this fact, you have to seek out 'influencers' in the organization to make things happen. These influencers are essential to making change happen, getting it 'sold' and embraced. 
• Leaders must strive to get the influencers on board with the change. 

On Break change into bite-sized pieces

• Leaders understand that people need two things: the information about the reason behind the change, and time to adjust to it. 
• As a leader, you cannot wait forever to get everyone to commit to the new direction. So, you need to break big changes into small 'bites' that people are more likely to ingest, digest and accept quickly.
• By moving forward in small steps, you can move your organization with frequent, continual and steady forward progress rather than through periodic big jumps. 
• In change leadership, you must 'sow seeds' rather than 'drop bombs'. Allow change to grow on your people.

On Build Positive momentum

• Leaders know that an early failure or set back can create more resistance later - even if they do manage to overcome it. It is much easier to move a rock in motion than one that is stationary. 
• Building a record of quick, early wins helps your people accept the upsets that can and will happen on the way to success.
• Understand the power of momentum - positive and negative. Pick the step that has the highest probability of success as your first move. 

Yours,
Something Small Thinking Big