The Executive Recruiting in 21th Century

I Spent some time to walk through a few top executive headhunters' website, good to see many companies already had a sense of urgency to change the recruiting style for hunting the leaders and senior executives, there're some international job openings listed on their website, which is great, to make the process more transparent.

I believe the key revolution for recruiting the senior talent is really not suppose to just sell the past, should more promote the potential (such as raw intelligence, self-motivated, drive, etc).

Most of the recruiters today just search the key words inside the candidate's the resume, , but I feel the essential about recruiting should search beyond the surface, dig deeper about the candidate's raw intelligence, self-motivating and learning capabilities, such as:

-Thought Leadership: that's sort of raw intelligence, which means you would voice the different opinions for many groups: such as new Americans, entrepreneur, female, minority., etc.

-Fresh Eyes and Mindset: The cross-cultural, cross-industrial, cross-functional background would give the candidates insight to see beyond the surface, help companies to create value and take leadership in global market.

--Entrepreneurial spirit: that indicates the candidates are self-motivated, drive to change, and help create new revenue stream;

Those are the essential for the futuristic leadership fitting for many companies in every industries, and very specific skill could be learned very fast if the candidates are drive enough.

Well, the headhunter companies in the first decade of the 21th century may try to recruit the experiencing excellence without the soul, in the 2nd decade of 21 century, they could truly be renamed as soul-hunter agency to hunt the potential leaders with mission in 21th century!

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The Art of BPM in Web 2.0 Era

In last couple of years, we’ve been through the toughest Big Recession in our life, there’re so many industries suffering and struggling to keep surviving, as we discussed before, if any panaceas to save them, BPM (Business Process Management) could be one of the cures.

BPM enables the business grow and transform in steps with these changes, in today’s digitized web 2.0 world, BPM is more like coordination of the digital asset, resources and orchestrating the business optimization in real time rather than just automation and control.

We could ask some questions to dig deeper:
1.What is the key business process that creates the core or best value proposition for your business?

In IT industry such as software, it may be the product development process, in Airline and Hospitality industry, it could be customer service which bring up the best value for the customers.

2.Should BPM implementation top down or bottom up?
Since BPM is the management of business process, top down strategic business overview is the necessity for understanding business’s core value and prioritize the business process to implement BPM; and the bottom up approach to implement specific business process in real time are the methodology. Just like SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), Top down meet Bottom up are the right scenario.

3. Look at business process management(BPM) in an enterprise or industry, where are the interesting and best opportunities in the future?
In current web 2.0 world, the meta data become richer and deeper, the rise of the smart digital assets such as web content, collaboration platforms presents a compelling opportunity to extend process management to viable human-driven process, that also brings great possibilities to take advantage of those smarter data and information and integrate them into BPM with logic steps embedded with SOA and BI.

The art of BPM is to integrate people, process and technology in the real time. It allows us to treat enterprise end-to-end processes as strategic assets that can be managed and improved over time.

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Globalization

Globalization means to unify, digest, inherent and absorb the quintessence of world-wide multiple cultures, to build up the colorful global culture and the best world than ever.

Today, I got the opportunity to participate the web meeting about “Cross-Cultural Competency”, very impressed on Dr. Karine Shomer’s deeper presentation focusing on multiple dimensions of diversity, core value difference of culture, and related work protocol differences.

From my observation, if saying the first decade of 21th century, the world embraced the Globalization at the faster pace, and became flatter than ever because of the web 2.0: the technology is all about social networking and mass collaboration with the blurring of lines between content creator and user; Global 2.0 means the global companies in developed countries outsourced manufacturing and also white collar engineering job to developing countries such as China and India, the global virtual team has been built up to work together to accomplish the life cycle of products or projects by taking advantage of web 2.0 technologies such as virtual meeting collaboration platform, blogs, video, audio, social network.
In the 2nd decade of 21th century we just stepped in, the world becomes not only flatter but also more colorful and synchronized than ever with multi-polar centers, it may come to the era of Global 3.0 by using emerging web 3.0 technologies, it based on “intelligent” web applications using:
•Natural language processing
•Machine-based learning and reasoning
•Intelligent applications

What exactly Global 3.0 and Web 3.0 means, it means:
•Openness: Web 3.0 means open sources, open application platform, an open data to create more open tools and possibility through the web; then Global 3.0 means: open culture understanding, not only for knowing the diversified customs, but also more understand the open style of multi-cultural communication, open mindset of diversified new leadership

•True 3-D Global: Web 3.0 means the global database, the 3D Web and beyond, the 3D avatars, 3D-Shopping, and 3D Communication & Collaboration; Global 3.0 means to truly understand the multiple dimension of diversities, not only respect the difference, but also penetrate and value the diversity.

•Control, not overload: Web 3.0 means to set up the standard and build up the order, and make users search and find information more accurately, then Global 3.0 means to unify, digest, inherent and absorb the quintessence of world-wide multiple cultures, to build up the colorful global culture and the best world than ever.

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Are there any panaceas to cure the troubled companies in those traditional industries?

 Heterogeneous senior leadership team could help to stimulate the deeper business thinking, create the new revenue stream, and expand the business globally.

This economic downturn has made many great companies fall, a few listed in Jim Collin’s "Good to Great" list, such as Circuit City. Jim already clarified those pitfalls in his new book "How the Mighty Fall", so my questions would be: are there any panaceas to cure the troubled companies in those traditional industries?

•BPM: business process management, it integrates business, process, IT into the management embedded with business intelligence, business optimization, to make business continue to improve efficiency and effectiveness. BPM could be the panacea to fix those falling mighty.

•SAAS: Software as a Service, deliver the software service on-demand via the internet, HBR calls it the best business model in the world, it may also bring up the new perspective to run enterprises.

•Cloud with virtualization: as we discussed before, those are the wind and wing to make falling mighty stand up or even fly over again by streamlining resources, new technology, and process.

•CRM & Unified Communication: Many troubled companies are customer-centric businesses such as airlines, hotels, retailers, banks, automobiles., etc., to deliver the best, personalized customer service would be the key to regain customers’ confidence and bring up the value for consumers in the 21st century. Besides IT, the leadership style and human factors could be some other key panacea solutions:

•Diversified executive with a global vision: Heterogeneous senior leadership team could help to stimulate the deeper business thinking, create the new revenue stream, and expand the business globally.

•Entrepreneurial spirit: To encourage not only the management team but also employees to think like the owner, take initiatives, take the calculated risks, and make the sacrifice if needed.

•Make stars in all industries: Not only Google and Google’s employees are stars if so, they only make influences at the one or two dots in the internet spot; attract the best and brightest to work in the diversified industries, to make an impact, to think differently and also gain the financial rewards when helping rejuvenating and curing the mighty.

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Talking about “Sustainable Cloud” in San Patrick’s day

Today, the San Patrick’s day, people celebrate the day with parades, wearing of the green, and drinking green beer, we went to the Cloud-Connect conference, to brainstorm the cloud. Just summarized 5 Q&As about this holiday “cloud phenomenal”:

1.What kind of Cloud do we categorize, who are the leaders these days?

There’re public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, community cloud., etc.
Amazon is the dominated pioneering leader to host public cloud, and Google and Saleforce.com are more like the major service provider to host the community cloud for their particular applications. All the other large companies such as IBM, HP, Microsoft., etc may build up their own strong private cloud to catch up; the cloud landscape may reshape in the future.

2.Why is it the right timing for Cloud to stay now, beyond just the buzzword?
There’re fundamental emerging technologies and service model behind the cloud such as:
•Virtualization: the proven emerging technology to help consolidate physical servers
•SAAS: the Software as Service business model
•SOA: Software Oriented Architecture
•Web 2.0 : Web-based technology such as: video, audio, blog, wiki, etc.

3.What kind of infrastructure will be build on the top of Cloud?
• SAAS: Software as a Service
• PAAS: Platform as a Service
• IAAS: Infrastructure as a Service

4.The sustainable Cloud, the hype or reality?
Many of businesses believe the Cloud would be their business strategy by moving their data center to the cloud, when the technology become more mature with standardized GRC (governance, Risk and Compliance.

5.What’re those biggest concerns?
Data protection, privacy, security such as authentication and identification., etc.
Latency is probably the other big concerns for the data on the cloud.

Some observation: on Tue. Meeting, the Cloud audience is not so colorful, actually today, San Patrick’s day, I saw diversified audience with more color dressing, and the only female presenter in the whole conference won the launch pad, she really has a great demo: Switch to the Cloud by click-away, congratulations!

May more female leaders to stand on the cloud, not just compete with the men, but also Aliens!

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BI instill the new brain to the 21th century modern businesses

If you think cloud computing is the wind under modern enterprise’s wing, then BI (Business Intelligence) would be the new brain to stimulate today’s business strategy, to help streamline the business process, to increase efficiency and effectiveness.

What’s exactly BI? Business intelligence (BI) is a set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information. BI provides software applications such as corporate performance management, business analytics/predictive analytics, data visualization including executive dashboard and scoreboard, and many more. In summary, BI bring up the data insight to run today’s business with full-fledged tools and statistics.

Talking about BI vendors’ landscape, it has been changed significantly in this couple of years, which also prove BI would play the pivotal both in businesses cross vertical and technology vendors plan: IBM bought Congno (the Canada based BI vendor focusing on performance management) and SPSS (predictive analytics vendor); Oracle bought Hyperion; SAP bought Business Object.

SAS, the largest private software company in US, focus on developing integrated BI solutions since 1976, SAS also top the #1 employee-friendly companies recently; Though SAS doesn’t have stock listed on NYSE, the CEO and founder Dr. Jim Goodnight could be the best business intelligent mentor for Wall Street, especially in the last couple of years, we experienced the biggest recession in recent history, partly caused by the leadership failure.

Will BI go to SAAS (software as a service) model and lead to the “Cloud” in the future, I think that would be the trend, but it will take some time to grow with enhancing scalability, governance, risk-control and compliance.

BI is the most critical business technology imperative for both today’s large enterprise and small businesses in 21th century.

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Cloud with the chance to WIND OR SUNSHINE

Cloud computing is not only the buzzword these day, but also a revolutionary phenomenal to make impact on all the industries, businesses, and even consumers.

Though many IT gurus complain about its ambiguity, actually I feel “cloud” is such a great name or signal to bring up the unlimited imagination, just like the movie “Cloudy with the chance of meatballs”.

As entrepreneur, Cloud computing may help us to build up the global business on the fly: Cloudy with the chance to become the “WIND” under our wing; it turns IT into the utility, you can pay as you consumed, not so much overhead and initial investment, you can enjoy the best service with limited budget; Imagine: without Venture Capital, you may still have the chance to build up the new Amazon or Google kingdom (well, we may still need some Angel’s help here)

“Cloud” even touch the consumer directly, just like those pizzas and meatballs ; You could manage your files, your photos, your mobiles and your favorite everything on the cloud.

Cloud computing may become the latest disruptive technology to reshape not only IT, but also all the industries, Cloudy get the chance to be the “SUNSHINE“ and hope for all those troubled enterprises in many verticals in this downturn economy, If only they could catch the wave, build up the right strategy and have a great change agent CIO around.

Well, of course, cloud computing is still a baby, need some time to grow and mature; security, regulation, reliability., etc are the bottlenecks to break, Also the other concern is: the cloud computing will create the brand new super enterprises or still the old giant companies such as IBM, Microsoft would dominate the sky, if you count Amazon and Google as “old timers” too, that’s the other innovator’s dilemma.

Anyway, I believe the cloud imagination would grow to be a real phenomenal, not just bubbles.

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Inclusiveness

The thought leadership in 21th century should be more like a water-color painting or oil painting, undertaking more finished art work.

Today is March. 8, the international women’s day celebrate 100 years, though it’s not national holiday in US, it evokes some more thoughts about women leadership, definitely it made significant progress in the last century, but it’s still long way to go.

The leadership style in 20th century is more like a sketch, establish a basic composition by male dominated team; the thought leadership in 21th century should be more like a water-color painting or oil painting, undertaking more finished art work, create the soul to make the painting become the true art piece, women leadership and the diversity are those fabulous color and theme, to create the new spirit of 21th century leadership, to make the true art of modern management.

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New American vs. New Shanghainese

Shang Hai, the biggest city in China, develop so fast, it attracts many new immigrants to reside in the city, to make the permanent population in Shang Hai amounted to 19.21 million at the end of 2009.

The new immigrants in Shang Hai come from following different categories: Executives and managers in multi-national companies from US and Europe and worldwide become the new Shang Hai Expatriates, to work and live there; the oversea students and professionals from China go back to work in Shang Hai because of potential growth opportunities there in recent years; and many young people from other provinces come to Shang Hai to get a job and grow a career., etc.

We call these new immigrants in Shang Hai New Shanhaineses, they make Shang Hai emerge to become the Oriental Pearl again, and regain the spotlight in new global landscape.

In US, we have the new immigrants from all other the world, you can almost meet people in every corner of the global here, especially if you live in the large metropolitan area such as California or New York.

We’d like to be called the new Americans; Compared to the native Americans born here, we consciously select this country as our new land to fulfill our dreams, just like new Shanghainese, we’re here not just for a fancy car or a bigger house, we’re here to explore the possibilities, to reach the human potentials.

The new Americans make US still the best wonderland in the world, the new Shanghainese make Shang Hai and China the new dreamed land shining in the East.

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21th Century of Leadership

The first decade of 21th century is more focusing on idea generation, created internet engine and tools (such as Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter., etc) to connect worldwide people more effectively; the second decade of 21th century which is we are facing now may focus on vision building and integration, to collect and create the new wisdom by penetrating variety of culture, philosophy, and belief, to embrace the difference and global DNA.

• Diversity: It’s really beyond just the gender and race, it’s more about embracing the idea and vision from the diversified culture, education, religion, industry, functionality and angles.

• Raw Intelligence: Reward talent with independent thinking, pioneering leadership, find the self mission calls and reach the human potentials and realize the true meaning of the life.

• Global DNA: Not only respect and identify diversified culture, the more important is how to embrace, digest and penetrate worldwide and ancient wisdom.
If we could understand “Little could not bear, the chaos great plans” (from "The Analects of Confucius), we may grow more wisely as individual, even we could avoid the wars and make the peace to human society.

• Innovation: Beyond creating the new products and internet engine as Apple and Google do, but also be innovative to improve business process in traditional industries, and encouraging entrepreneurial spirit and new thought process to keep disrupting and improving.

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