Seven Strategic Dual Roles of Tomorrow’s Recruiters

The swift horse are usually found, but not the same as ‘Pak Lok" (the person who has good judgments to spot ‘Long Distance Running Horse’.
Oriental Proverb

Like the Pak Lok, every recruiter intent to hunt for the right talent, but with different approach: yesterday’s recruiters are busy searching for the keyword, evaluate the right horse with their outdated methodology, personal judgment, old channel and fitness on the surface, most often they spot the short distance running horse, bring in the candidate with the short-term perspective or similar mindset to many organizations, that might be the deep reason for the leadership failure in Great Recession and the root cause for How the Mighty Fall


Tomorrow’s recruiters will learn from Pak Lok, see through their clients’ character and courage, walk through their soul and heart, to become the superior talent master and visionary soul hunter.

Here are the seven strategic dual roles defined for the futuristic recruiters, to inspire more discussion:

1.The Visionary & the Change Agent

Most of today’s recruiters treat candidate like mechanical component with standard functionality, move them from company A to company B horizontally, then the organizations assemble them into the same old machine (framework) with the same old CPU (mindset).

The true change agent recruiters or entrepreneurial recruiters not only exploit the traditional talent pipeline, just like energy sector, it’s a strategic imperative to explore the renewable talent energy: no matter it’s solar panel (the sunshine type talent, with positive mindset, not too much shadows), clean tech (the water flow type talent, desire to move on & up, with transferrable strength), or biofuel (the nature made raw talent, their specialties to make impossible possible., etc).

Tomorrow’s recruiters are not only the change agent in their own industry, but also have the deep vision for their clients’ industries (anyway, we have so many troubled industries around), help build up the dream team with inspiring mind & culture, and shake up those traditional industries.

The progressive global talent is the best product in recruiting industry and the human society overall.

2.The Soul Hunter & Talent Master
That in the soul which is called the mind is, before it thinks…. Aristotle

Today’s recruiters are called headhunters: try to hunt for the right head based on the static keyword searching, through their limited talent pipeline and old-fashioned recruiting channels.

However, in this post recession era, change is the only thing won’t change in the future, globalization, diversity, and the culture thing will last forever.

Tomorrow’s recruiters are hunting for the GOOD HEART: the purpose & mission, the MEGA MIND: the whole-brain thinker,& the thought leadership; and the BIG GUT: the courage & character.

Tomorrow’s talent masters like gardener, treat the talent like viable plants, help the tree grow taller, stronger, also watering the grass to make them greener, fresher, the talent master work with the executives from top down, to build up the positive learning culture and talent landscape, full of sunshine and pleasant aura.


3.The Strategist & the Practitioner
When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills. 
Oriental Proverb

In the last decade, many recruiters make the strategic move to transform the business model from offline to online, the pros is online platform bring up the convenient interface for technical job hunting activities such as searching position open (mainly mid-level or lower) or submitting resumes., etc. however, the cons is: it seems build up the new wall between the employer and candidate.

The future of recruiting approach should be more hybrid and tactical: keep online automation and convenience, also have more transparent offline process and face-to face interaction and activities, take more initiative to fill up the talent gap, grow, renew and expand the talent pool.

4.Organization Architect & Human Engineer
The future of recruiters are both “soul hunter” and “soul engineer”

Today’s recruiters are more like administrative function inside the organization or outsourced HR solution. Tomorrow’s recruiters are the best strategic partners to work with the executives or the clients shoulder by shoulder, head to head,, they take action as the enterprise HR architect, take advantage of the latest technology such as enterprise 2.0 and social network, to breakthrough the hierarchy & bureaucracy, frame up the learning organization, and share the unconventional success story.

The recruiters and talent coach can also be called the human “soul engineer”: using engineering perspective, pivotal talent segment, dealing with talent risk, building up HR governance, implementing talent diversification, digging into multiple talent channels and exploring the alternative talent pipeline.

5.The Artist & Scientist
“ Good artists copy, great artists steal” Picasso

Today’s recruiters may just try to “steal” the talent from the competitors. Tomorrow’s recruiters are brighter with more holistic nature: cycle the talent cross the industry, even cross the global.

The future of recruiters are the great artists, treat each talent as a piece of art, to appreciate the master piece, and to master the innovative talent via connecting the dots:

“I am not a physician and a storyteller, I regard the two things as linked..”
Oliver Sacks (Professor and Writer)

The future of recruiter is also the scientist, with the right technology such as advance analytics, HR metrics, Performance Management, the talent could be observed, experimented and explained in the respected and humanity way.

The future of recruiter develop the right process and value system to “harden” the soft skill such as leadership, entrepreneurship., etc, and “soften” the hard skill such as the engineering and financing. They are framing the new HR discipline with the artistic perspective and scientific methodology.

6.The Philosopher & Philanthropist

“Just as there is a blueprint of a building or a circle, so to there exist blueprints of courage, of justice, of humankind, of all living things. Western Philosophy

From philosophical perspective, the recruiters may have one of the most meaningful careers in the world: to hunt for the very best blueprint: the courage, the justice, the humanity., etc., to architect the blueprint of the great organization, the city, the nation and whole human society.

From philanthropic point of view, the recruiter may also have one of the most valuable professions: help human reach the full potential to advance the humanity. Besides help human out of poverty and illness, talent management is truly the next level of philanthropy, if we connect the dot again, the advanced education and talent management system could naturally speed up the human’s advancement from the basic survival demand. The charity effort in many large organization may also need connect with their talent strategy, since the charity is truly beyond tax saving or public relationship, it’s the blueprint of organization’s purpose.

7.Enterprise Surgeon & Pharmacist


Great Recession left us with many struggling industries and troubled organizations, plus the large available talent pool. It’s the perfect timing for the recruiters and all HR professionals to make a difference with more bold initiative, aggressive roadmap and innovative approach:

The future of recruiters like surgeon to help fix those sick enterprises with new blood, open mind and fresh eyes; The visionary (who can see the others can not), the next generation of leadership and talent will be the right panacea (possibly made of the West Medicine & East Medicine magic combination).

In summary, Pearl are everywhere, but not the same as the eyes, Like the Pak Lok, to spot ‘Long Distance Running Horse with the insight, The future of recruiters will have audacious attitude, the sharp eyes, the open mind and the big heart, to fit in this seven strategic dual roles, to hunt for the right souls in the 21st century.

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Entrepreneur CIO

Being an entrepreneur is one of the most critical and inspiring experience and preparation to become the CIO in 21st century, to fit in Gartner well-defined 6 styles of "money-making" CIOs: entrepreneur CIO, revenue search CIO, business development CIO, cost-optimization CIO and Innovation CIO, and the last one: public-serving CIO (even you are not working in public service, every CIO could be the natural leader to serve the public and the world for better), why:

1. Being entrepreneur, you have to wear different hats, which teach you to think from different angles, from customer's perspective, take vendor's shoes, be thoughtful for the employees and many more;

2. Being entrepreneur to inspire you think without border: since you have to work cross the function, cross the organization, many of us may also need work cross-industry, and cross-culture, cross-nation, etc.

3. Being entrepreneur to make your skin thicker: "Thicker skin is God's gift", every entrepreneur may have the experience to approach the customer boldly, not necessarily shameless though, so either your pursuing Martin Luther Kings "I have the dream" or Steve Job's "Sell the dream", it truly provoke your courage;

4. Being entrepreneur, you have not only surviving but also try to thriving, so the revenue search, business development and innovation are your daily job, that's great preparation for becoming the unconventional CIO today, but it will be the new normal for tomorrow's CIO and many other senior executives in larger enterprise.

In summary, no matter what CIO stand for: chief information officer, chief innovation officer, chief integration officer, chief inspiration officer, chief implementation officer., etc, the shining spot is the entrepreneur's spirit, even it stand for: the career is over --it's also not so scary, since being an entrepreneur CIO could refresh your dream, rekindle your energy and rebuild your asset.

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Brainstorm the Process Revolution: The Art or The Science?

The focal point of the next generation of BPM will be innovation-oriented, customer-centric, GRC enhanced, cloud-based, module-designed, with a broad vision of transforming to the real-time, extensible enterprise.

Economy recession makes business process management a hot spot to grow: software vendors try to repackage themselves as BPM providers; Organizations intend to rejuvenate themselves through BPM solutions. 

Today’s BPM solutions layout the solid foundation to define, automate, control and monitor the business processes to improve the quality and reduce the cost, it intends to build up the responsive enterprise with firm control system tools; However, today’s BPM may not adapt to the new demand and technologies at the new decade in the 21st century.

The future of BPM needs to respond “changes ”more promptly, such as the globalization, the social computing, and the cloud strategy., etc, to transform into the future of enterprise with real-time, extensible, proactive analytical capabilities.

How to REFINE the art of next generation of BPM:

1.Reframe the Enterprise Architecture via Enterprise 2.0 collaboration tools:

People, process, technology are the tangible building blocks for modern enterprise; strategy and culture are the intangible fabric to weave around it, so the future of BPM will:

-Refresh these core business processes to make sure the changes are not only
predicted but also fully prepared;

-Restructure the organizational framework or flowchart to ensure the right people
in the right position at the right time;

-The next generation of BPM will naturally integrate enterprise 2.0 collaboration tools into the software suite, not only implement automation but also enhance the learning as a process, and enable knowledge sharing.

2.Rekindle the Business Innovation via Cloud & Social Computing

The innovation process re-engineering is about nurturing innovation skills, ingraining innovation culture, embracing innovative technology, and developing the updated metrics.

Cloud Computing allows organizations to experiment on new innovative ideas with a limited budget, fast setup, and expand their product or marketing niche to create a new business model and revenue stream with scalability.

By aligning cloud strategy without a cloudy look, an enterprise may reinvent itself as a growth engine, and the purple cash cow.

The process on the fly (the future process) is all about building up the business cloud infrastructure to implement the deep integration of eco-system, with the chance of having agility, modularization, fungibility (cloud standardization).

3.Realign the Business Priority and Enterprise Resources & Supply Chain

How to build up the customer-centric, employee-inspiring culture is the priority for today’s organization.

Unified communication, social computing, and many latest technologies help optimize the supply chain, streamline the enterprise resources, and improve customer service.

The future of BPM will enable MashUp, crowdsourcing abilities :

-Encourage the customers to co-design the products, service, and communities, to share the thought and feedback, to enhance customer responsiveness and satisfaction.

-Inspire the employees to make more contributions, toppling hierarchy barriers, and breakdown the conventional boundary, to encourage the culture of learning and embedded it into the business process and strategy seamlessly.


4.Revitalize the GRC Enforcement

The Great Recession may be partly caused by the failure of effective governance, risk control, and compliance process.

In the post-recession era, the effective questions we may ask to enhance GRC are:
-- How to define more global universal business cases?
-- How to revitalize the regulation change, GRC enforcement into processes?
--How to optimize the process design with advanced analytics and BI capabilities

Today’s BPM still focuses on control and the problem at hand, a tendency toward tunnel vision.

The focal point of the next generation of BPM will be innovation-oriented, customer-centric, GRC enhanced, cloud-based, module-designed, with a broad vision of transforming to the real-time, extensible enterprise.

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The Food For Thought: The Spirit of Turkey from Thanksgiving Holiday

Americans consume about 48 million turkeys in Thanksgiving. What exactly can we learn from this elegant, vivid creature:

1.Self-Sacrifice Spirit: turkeys sacrifice their life to make a symbol at human’s holidays, to unify the family and lift our holiday spirit.

2.Self-Respect Attitude: turkeys’ colorful, metallic feather not only offer them survival capability: keep warm and dry, help fly., etc, but also remind us of respect: Appearance are important to self respect and also respect for others.

3.Take advantage of Good Resource & Talent: Turkeys eat nuts, berry, insects., etc, any food available in their immediate terrain, not waste resource and talent

4.Leverage Short Term Goal with Long Term Strategy: Turkeys can fly short distance powerfully, however, they have difficulty to maintain the same energy power with long distance journey, so as human, we can learn to leverage the passion and energy for continuous growth.

5.Symbolize the Renew and Rebirth: Turkeys are bred to grow faster and bigger, it may symbolize the life renewal and growth blossom.

Those may be the reasons the President Franklin Benjamin wanted to name turkey as national bird to replace the eagle.

From Thanksgiving tradition, we may also learn American Indian and pilgrim were sharing the food and culture to celebrate the harvest, the same legacy could be carried on today:

Citizens by birth could learn from citizen by choice: the courage, the new culture, the restless pursuit of new land and exploring the fresh development;

Citizen by choice could learn from citizen by birth: the tradition, the belonging, the value, and the open attitude to welcome the newcomers.

Besides Turkey diner, either you go shopping spree to fill up your handbag, or you chose hanging around in Borders to enjoy free coffee and books to refresh your mind set, the touch point of holiday is truly about lifting up the energy and spirit, hopefully also help blackout the businesses' balance sheet and speed up the economy.

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The Future of Enterprise: Seven Excitement from Enterprise 2.0

The Enterprise 2.0 meeting held last week has not only brought out quite a few of passionate software vendors with their emerging collaboration tools, more importantly, it inspired the imagination about what the future of enterprise looks like: Spider ( still center based environment) or Starfish (more distributed, informal enterprise).


Here are 7 Es to evoke further exploration :

1. Engage –both the employees and customers communication more seamlessly: enterprise 2.0 tools are truly about collaboration and engagement, to stimulate more effective communication cross the boarder, and engender the collective wisdom. It more easily filled up the communication gap between business vs. IT, c-level executive vs. front-line employees, and organization vs. customer or suppliers. The future of enterprise is all about collaborative social business

2. Energize-the innovation and fresh idea everywhere: from product/project management, to human resource management , from supply chain to customer service, the future of enterprise is truly about innovative business

3. Experiment—the new organization infrastructure: beyond the traditional functional department with silo view, the future of enterprise is composed with many mash-up, cross-functional talent teams: HR Center of Excellence (may not just people form HR), BI Center of Excellence (may not just people from IT), Customer Center of Excellence., etc. The new shape of enterprise may not look like pyramid, more weaved as enterprise grid, with both vertical communication and horizontal interaction in more effective fashion.

4. Embed –the business process management and change management into the blood of the enterprise via collaborative enterprise 2.0 tools, BPM is not just the top-down strategy or bottom-up business cases, it’s the daily journey for every employee encircling the organization, the future of enterprise is a progressive business.

5. Empower –the best talent: the visionary architect, the business transformer, the thought leader, the idea conceiver, the customer evangelist, the HR strategist, the sales &marketing genus., etc, enterprise 2.0 tools shake up the traditional performance evaluation, allow each star shine in the sky. The future of enterprise is about talent intelligence, so the future of career path is more approachable like lattice than the ladder.


6. Execute-the strategy and operation with more collaborative and transparent way via open communication tools, with integrated GRC (governance, risk control and compliance) methodology & perspective. The future of enterprise is about executing better, faster and cheaper.


7 Encourage—the learning culture, enterprise 2.0 is about sharing, sharing the knowledge, thought and experience from outside (customer) in to insider (employee) out, then optimize the process, and embrace the change, the future of enterprise is the learning organization.

It may take years for enterprise 2.0 tool to become more mature and cognizant, but the future of enterprise is about there: like the garden in the Spring, to make every plant shining under sunshine, with greener style. Winter is here, Spring is no so far away…

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Refine the Future of Female Leadership

A Company Achieves Uncommon Excellence by bring together Uncommon People for a Common Purpose. (Give Uncommon People a Uncommon Identity)
-Gandi

Today’s turbulent economic macro-environment , multi-center global landscape and overwhelmingly new technologies offer the female executives and leaders unprecedented opportunities and responsibility to make significant positive impact in their organization and even the whole world.

1. Be a Transformational leader than a micro-manager

Innovation is a new way of doing things that results in positive changes.

The statistics from many prestigious academia or media co. (Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business school, Mckinsey ., etc) has proved the female leaders bring better solid performance for their organizations in the long run.

In this post Great Recession era, though as minority at the whole leadership team, the female executive leaders should standout to standardize the management infrastructure, breakdown the hierarchy and bureaucracy, enhance the corporate governance, take initiative on sustainability, reframe the business model and transform the corporate culture

Not only become the role models for their employees; but also set up a fresh example for their male peers; It’s the historic transformational moment to become an innovative female leaders and make a significant difference.

2. Be a natural magnet than a perfect superwoman

The last thing a competent leader wants is a company consisting of yes people who have identical skills and cooking-cutter thoughts.

Female leaders usually takes much more effort and make more sacrifice than their male peers to climb the ladder, so the nature of “perfection” takes them to the leadership position may not be the unique charisma to make them become the effective leader.

It’s more critical to be a natural magnet to attract the best and diversified talent to work for the organization, rather than you are the best in every perspective. As matter of factor, being a stereotyped superwoman may create a distance or gap between the leader and the team.

3. Be a Game-change strategist than a power player

Our Value are Reflected in Everything we say or Do.

Be a power player is no fault as long as taking advantage of power for good.
Beyond that, the female leaders are the nature strategist as many roles:
--The visionary in your domain and industry;
--The practitioner to exercise the true art of modern management
--the wise mentor and cheerleader to embrace the diversity
--The magnet to attract the best;
--The logic predictor (not necessary a fortune teller though) to prepare the future with scenario planning
--A judge to bring back the common sense and fair value
-A fighter to fight the prejudices or hubris.
-A constructor to reshape, resize or rebuild the corporate ladder..
--A thought leader to voice for those without voice
-A Colorful change agent, a rainbow bridge, and so on…

The tipping point of female leadership in the 21th century:
The more diversified female leader grows, the more organization that will be attracted to the top talent, to help human achieve the full potential and accelerate the new revolution to advance the human society.

Above are some thought after reading the article from HBR:
http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/oct2010/ca20101012_599532.htm

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Leadership Innovation: 7 Game-Change Mind Sets for the Future of Leadership

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function “
F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Today’s downturn economy, accelerated globalization, energy shortage and many other uncertainties make the world become a complex, unpredictable macro-environment ever.

The future of leader may have to play “the Big Brain Game”, see through the problems with many different angles, and solve the problems with all possible alternative steps and solutions, more counting on the collective wisdom rather than a dominance voice or absolute right or wrong answers.

The silver bullet in digitized global world is innovation.


1.Be Authentic
Only through the truth, do we come to grace. The value proposition for tomorrow’s leader would be authentic, unique and diversified. Being authentic also means to inspire innovation, to become the change agent, and to make positive influence.

An authentic way to stand out is to have a point of view.

2.Pursuit the Life Purpose Greater than Self
In today’s world of “Pull”, wikipedia and web 2.0 technologies provide unprecedented opportunities for any individual to build up a strong professional and personal brand, and become the leader in his or her own domain.

3.Curiosity Imperatives
Curiosity is a critical piece of raw intelligence, curiosity may even keep people look younger, think fresher and act more flexible. Curiosity is the original drive to motivate people explore broader, learn deeper and help us step out of comfort zone and achieve bigger. Curiosity nurtures the lifetime learner and creative thinker.

4.Cross-Boundary Leadership
The world has been interwovened through the internet and the latest technologies, cross-boundary  such as cross-cultural, cross-industrial, cross-functional leadership innovation  is becoming the new normal, the new leadership is a bridge to connect cognizant difference, engage the diversified talent and reframe the new business model.

5.Unconventional Thinkers

To be unconventional is to be strategic; to be strategic is to be innovative and beyond; the future of leaders need cultivate 4 “I”s (Insight, Imagination, Innovation and Improvement); From Sunzi 36 stratagems to poetry of Tagore “Stray Bird”, multi-cultural wisdom is the hotbed to be unconventional

6.Ask Effective Questions
The question about future is more critical than an answer about yesterday. If today’s executives try to answer and micromanage the short-term concerns, tomorrow’s leaders would more focus on asking the effective questions to lead the future, and draw others into solutions.

“The important thing is not to stop questioning.” Albert Einstein

7.Add Some Fresh Styles
Fashion fades, but style lives: entrepreneur’s spirit, the green lover,  or a global mindset are more than welcomed, no matter which color is your parachute, the beauty of diversity would be essential to the future of leadership.

The management of previous generation have brought authority, idealism and efficiency, sometimes hierarchy, greedy and arrogance, their philosophy might be the game of “WIN”; then the future of leader could be more open, colorful and collaborate, The nature of leadership is more about pursuing the life call of purpose,  to lead through influence.

Please also enjoy the leadership videos from HBR:

http://www.youtube.com/HarvardBusiness#p/u/1/j8WRz3CxafE

http://www.youtube.com/HarvardBusiness#p/u/4/kb2PI0LaxGE

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The Purpose of Enterprises

Enterprise just like an individual should find the purpose bigger than itself, not only for the pursuit of profit but also for exploring the mission and purpose to the society, that’s the yin/yang of the visionary enterprise.

Here are mission statements from a couple of industry leaders:

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Kimberly-Clark: To enhance the health, hygiene and well-being of people every day, everywhere.

Nike: To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. If you have a body, you are an athlete."

Microsoft: We work to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential

The legacy industries such as airline were built on human’s pride and imagination, however, they were suffering economically for the last decade, as a loyal customer and warm advocate for many great airlines, I believe beyond pursuit of different revenue streams which is fair, how to explore the great customer experience catches the insight from this perspective: We are in the customer service business, and we happened to be in transportation industry. That’s why they are doing better)

What other BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) the airline could pursuit beyond profit, or even transform the industry from “surviving mode” into “thriving prosperity”:

1.Inspire the diversified culture and global wisdom: Since airline is the privileged industry to touch the world from the sky, how to understand the world deeper and better may help serve the world best.

2.Take the leadership on the new technology battleground: Bio fuel, energy efficiency, and the latest information technology have great potential to make the industry thriving, the airline should make a splash to become the leader.

3.Rekindle the passion and imagination for the sky: the airline could become the incubator for nurturing the colorful leadership, space science lover, and travel adventurers.

Now United airline and Continental airline merged as the biggest airline in the world. What’s the fresh mission statement for the new carrier to pursuit the purpose such as:
Unite the best, to build the smartest enterprise in the world, and inspire the human to reach beyond the sky

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Cultural Insight from The Moon Festival

Today, 10:00pm, September 22nd, just look out of the window, there’s bright full moon hanging right on the sky, shining in the solitude. The Moon festival (also called the Mooncake or Mid-Autumn festival) is right here..

Moon Festival vs. Thanksgiving
What is the Moon festival? Every year on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, when the moon is at its maximum brightness for the entire year, the Chinese celebrate "zhong qiu jie." It is the most important festival after the Chinese Lunar New Year. A full moon is a symbol of togetherness. As such, the Mid-Autumn Festival is a time for family reunion. It's also called "Reunion Festival", just like Thanksgiving in United States. Instead of eating turkey, mooncakes are inextricably linked with the Moon festival, mooncakes may be filled with everything from dates, nuts, and fruit to eggs, sausages. More exotic creations include green tea, Haagen-Daz has even gotten into the act by introducing a line of ice cream mooncakes in Asian markets.



The Philosophy of Life
There have been numerous poems about the Mid-Autumn Festival since ancient times, the most famous piece below comparing our life’s up & down to the four moon phases (new moon, first quarter moon, full moon, and second quarter moon):

"Men have sorrow and joy, they part or meet again;
the moon may be bright or dim, she may wax or wane.
So let us wish that man will live long as he can;
though miles apart,
we'll share the beauty she displays."

The philosophy of our life is not because it’s perfect, it’s more like a colorful journey to enjoy the nature such as sunshine & moonlight and pursue the purpose.

Ying and Yang of Change Management
The moon and sun reflect the notion yin and yang in Oriental philosophy, also means different ways of looking at a world that may be experienced in a variety of different ways. Yin, or 'the shady side' is contrasted with 'the sunny side' yang, and the idea is that everything has at least two aspects to it.

In today’s multi-polar world, the modern management need absorb energy from both sunshine and moonlight, digest the difference, to create the multi-cultural laser and explore the quintessence of ying and yang.

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Information is Power : 5 “I”s in 21th Century

“I never worry about the future. It comes soon enough” Albert Einstein

However, many of us may worry about the future, especially in this downturn economy, today’s enterprise also feel uncertain about the future, that’s why “How the Mighty Fall” is the latest hot management guide from Mr. Jim Collin.

In the future, the digital information is expected to double in size every 18 months, how to collect, analyze, optimize information are the foundation to build up the best businesses; for humans, the information-synthesis brain is the 21th century mindset to create insight, help make the right decision, and bring up the long-term perspective, to avoid the leadership failures we just experienced in this BIG recession.

The five “I”s are the essentials in this explosive information age:

“Information”: Information is King & Question, how to get the right information at right time in the right place would become the most critical factor to run today’s business and personal life; Internet and search engine are those power engine to stimulate this new age.

“Insight”: Information is the phenomenal on the surface, insight is the core value to differentiate the capabilities; Many cool technologies such as BI and predictive analytics are the tools to open the “insight” door;

“Innovation”: Innovation could be the prettiest flower in the information tree, innovation is the intersection of insight and invention, the hottest companies these days are innovation-driven: Apple produce the innovative products; Google create the innovative business model; Amazon build up the innovative business process., etc. Innovation is the key to lead both breakthrough and incremental progress in human society.


“Interaction”: the social network and Mashup are the hottest tools to inspire people’s interaction, to connect innovation with the imagination.

“Imagination”: "Imagination is more important than knowledge, knowledge is limited; imagination encircle the world." Albert Einstein (again)

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Hopefully the 5 “I”s power soup could help us turn around from this unusually uncertain economy.




,

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Open Leadership to Execute Innovative Turn Around

I did get opportunity to participate the “Predictive Analytics” seminar in San Francisco this week, is it the latest technology crystal ball to bring us the new insight, especially the economy has just been through the Great Recession in our life time: many great companies disappeared forever nd many named brands got tarnished and acquired by others such as SUN Microsystems and Merrill Lynch.

Mr. Jim Colin’s latest book “How the Mighty Fall” may clarify the reasons to cause those Giants fall; To inspire the economy recovery, let’s also share some turn around stories to discuss the futuristic leadership in the new decade.

1.Game Changer’s Courage

Mr. Barack Obama became the first black President in US history; the media titian Oparah Winfrey makes significant impact beyond the entertainment industry; Steve Job changes the business models in the multiple industries and keeps making splash in Silicon Valley, they are definitely the game changers; not only in main street, we desperately need more game changers in Wall Street and all those troubled legacy industries such as airline, auto, bank., etc, since they are the infrastructure backbone of modern society.

2.Entrepreneurial Innovation

The government in Japan invited Kazuo Inamori , a Japanese entrepreneur and the founder of Kyocera Corporation and KDDI Corporation (two Fortune 500 companies) to become the CEO of JAL Airline, when it enters bankruptcy protection on January 19, 2010, and lead the air carrier through its restructuring. Mr. Kazuo Inamori is the perfect role model with the entrepreneurial innovation, persistence and enriched life and business philosophy.

3.Cross-Industrial Fresh Eyes

Mr. Idris Jal led the state-controlled carries Malaysia Airlines from the brink of bankruptcy to record breaking profits, brand it the “five-star value carries”, Mr. Idris never worked in airline before he took a leadership to turn around the troubled airline.

It’s the other impressive turn around story: beyond the knowledge, the open mind, the fresh eyes, the big gut, and the warm heart, those are critical leadership charisma to instill the passion, stimulate the hope and make a difference.

4.Cross-Cultural Creativity

Mr. Carlos Ghosn is a Brazilian born businessman of Lebanese origin, he is the current CEO and President of Renault of France and Nissan of Japan, he is largely credited with turning around Nissan. As an outsider in charge of one of Japan's largest companies, Ghosn has been extremely successful

Mr. Carlos’s multiple cultural background provides him the unique insight about the corporation culture and purpose, he is a true global leader with competitive accent.

5.Unconventional Thinker’s Common Sense

The Futuristic leaders will focus on asking the right questions instead of just crafting the old-style answers; The futuristic leaders will be the systematic thinkers with global perspective, engineering logic and artist’s imagination; they should be natural communicators with cross-culture, cross-industrial, cross-functional understanding.

The latest technologies such as: Cloud, BI or BPM are the power to bring up the efficiency; But it’s still the human, the open-minded new leaders inspire the effectiveness, nurture the change cultures, and make the positive influences.

Mr. Lee Iacocca, the legendary turn around master in auto industry defined the 9 C's of Leadership: Curiosity, Creative, Communicate, Character, Courage, Conviction, Charisma, Competent and Common Sense in his book “Where have all the Leaders Gone”. Those qualities are still the best leadership criteria fit in 21 century with broader, deeper insight in the latest multi-polar global landscape.

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Culture Eat Strategy For Breakfast: Discuss Cultural Innovation in Global Economy

By opening up people’s mindset and taking advantage of the emerging technology, the forward-looking multi-national organizations will become the natural incubator to embrace the difference, inspire the creativity, improve the fair judgment and empower the right management.

The internet and globalization make unprecedented impact in modern human society, it will be superficial if the culture discussions are still base on recognizing the basic custom such as the ‘fork” vs."chopsticks," the true global strategy will embrace the cultural difference, absorb the philosophical quintessence, and integrate cross-cultural creativity with the best technology into the global organization’s mission and purpose.

Culture is one of the most intangible and strongest fabric weaving inside the human society and organization, it’s the critical ingredient to orchestrate the globalization  benefit for both emerging economies and developed countries.

Western style management is rational, scientific and logic, more like western style medicine, take the right pill to fix the ill in specific, usually it’s efficient (doing things right with the measurable result, but sometime at short term), it may cause some side-effect either (the necessary questions could be asked: is it doing the right thing for the long run?); Eastern style philosophy and management are more spiritual and integrated, maybe like herb, tea or acupuncture, try to boost your immunization, and enhance your energy, but the problem is how efficient they are, lack of the right benchmark to measure the performance and immediate results.

Western style leadership is more hands-on, managing in front of group, and inspiring by delivering the great speech; Eastern style of leadership is more natural, walking behind of the people, acting properly to attract the followers. Western communication is “talking is golden” and Eastern style could be “silence is golden”.
Even the red hot technology such as predictive analytics should refer two sides of coin:
“Study the past if you would like to define the future” Confucius;
“You can never plan the future by the past” Edmond Burke

Actually in today’s post crisis era, the most successful organizations in US are already learning deeper and faster from both sides and all angles; and the latest technologies such as internet, mobile computing, social network are the great catalyst to exchange the cultural essential and accumulate the collective wisdom, the diversified corporate leaders are the indefatigable ambassadors to glorify the world-wide cultural intelligence.

By opening up people’s mindset and taking advantage of the emerging technology, the forward-looking multi-national organizations will become the natural incubator to embrace the difference, inspire the creativity, improve the fair judgment and empower the right management.

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Seven Imperatives to Improve Leadership DNA in post-Crisis Era

Diversity and globalization are the most critical imperative in this multi-polar world, for any forward-looking global enterprise.

In the first decade of 21st century, we’ve been through the Great Recession in US, the tough time like this make many of us more humble, also bring some deep thought about how to develop the crucial new leadership in the upcoming decade.

 

The essentials of leading in post-crisis should have some significant distinction from before: the Western “heroic style” leadership will integrate with Eastern “Servant model”, the outgoing extrovert executives need mix up with logic introvert thought leaders; the business expertise will and have to touch base with IT and engineering specialty and analytics….

1.Multi-Dimensional thinking:

The leaders will be both humble and self-confidence, systematic thinker with articulation capability, executive’s responsibility, authority with entrepreneurial mindset, budget making…..

2.Scientific & Independent Decision Making Process

Today’s high performance leaders have the capabilities to see through the bias and see around the corner. Any guess work or “gut feel” like decision making process may be the true root cause of the leadership failure in the current economic crisis, how to build up the structured decision making process will test leaders wisdom and accumulated knowledge and expertise.

3.Competitive Accent
Diversity and globalization are the most critical imperative in this multi-polar world, for any forward-looking global enterprise, no matter it’s the board room, the executive team and middle management, the diversified voices with competitive accent would be the latest fashion and identity for the post crisis leadership.


4. Standardized and Structured Incentive Package

The image of executives in the last couple of decade are always contradictory in US, on the one hand, they are the heroes to inspire the world, on the other hand, they are overpaid, lost trust by their shareholders, employees. How to standardize the executive rewarding package with the reasonable structure should become the key to shake up the new leadership landscape.


5.Consistent Role Model Image In & Outside Workplace
People intent to look for the role models with positive impact everywhere, in main street, Wall Street, Silicon Valley or Hollywood, the leaders are the role models usually with simple and healthy life style, beyond star’s charisma persona.

6.Lifelong Learner

All the leaders should be the good and continuing learner with their own styles, in this world of information explosion: tireless learning capability would be another keep identity of new leadership

7 Streamlining Career Path

Groomed to become the leader are the part of strategic career planning and life scenario, today’s leader may need to think more about their post executive life: the entrepreneur, the adviser, the career coach., etc, career will be never over with the right support system and planning.

In Summary, the new leaders should have experienced the pain of normal American people in this economic downturn, they are not the isolated privileged class with silver spoon, the are the creative pioneers to bring up the new hope and blood for the corporate of America.

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Learning on Demand and Modern Talent Management

Lifetime learner has the new wings to learn on the fly. 

Web 2.0 technologies such as video, audio, blogs, wikis and social network craft the fashion of on-demand learning, and enhance the modern talent management and education system with the unprecedented open, creative style in the 21st century.


Lifetime learner has the new wings to learn on the fly. These cool web 2.0 tools encourage self-driven human beings to learn anytime, anywhere with any subject to evoke any dreams they may have at any age; and modern Talent Management has the new boundaries. HR in the old time is more like administrative function in the enterprise, now human resources could become the true strategic partner in the 21st century, HOW:

• Modern HR will evaluate the employee performance dynamically: the web 2.0 technologies become the efficient tools to manage with multi-dimensional focus, not only employee’s daily task delivery but also their drive, thought process and their value proposition, you may call it: Manage On the Behind;

• Modern Talent Management will enhance the on-demand learning curriculum to develop the talent pool, and take initiative on growing employees' transformable skill set to fit in the future.

• Modern HR not only make ‘Apple to Apple” comparison but also manage “Apple to Apple Pie” style insightful scenario planning: with these web 2.0 tools, the talent development is not just based on the past credential and experience, more counting on the talent’s potential, drive and time management skills

• The forward-looking leaders and managers are the corporate human architect to build up the business vision with their talent blocks; they are also the life coaches to help develop employees’ progressive careers; the human engineers to navigate the employees’ potentials, energize their spirit, and hunt their Mojo.

Learning on demand makes the learning process non-stoppable, fun, more efficient and effective, without border and limit, it brings the new perspective on individual growth, talent management, education revolution and the true globalization.

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Innovative Frugality

The Great Recession we’ve just been through has changed many of our perspective forever, both in business world and consumer’s life style, the businesses are struggling with cutting cost and improve the process efficiency, and the consumers are more sensitive to leverage the shopping price with the quality and brand.

The good news is: the emerging innovative technology such as internet and web 2.0 make frugality the new cool in 21st century.

Web conference is hot in enterprise world, to help company limit the physical conference and eliminate travel expense significantly, the maturity of web meeting and virtual trade show actually improves the event productivity and gain more audience base, the recorded version could be archived as educational resources for the future usage, it’s the vivid example of innovative frugality in the corporate world.

The ironic fact is: the web conference is such a innovative frugality machine for many industries, but it’s also the latest innovative disruption for airline, hotel and other hospitality industries in the last couple of years; fortunately, the same web 2.0 families such as social network, blogs, crowdsource could also bring up the new horizon for those struggle companies to expand the global landscape, especially lure the potential consumers with strong purchasing power in the emerging economies.

The webnar, virtual conference could also become the main stream of informal training for many companies in the most cost effective ways, help their employees upgrade the skill set, catch up the latest technology and industry trend, refresh their mindset and energy, those emerging technologies will inspire the lifelong learner to keep grow, make the learning scenario a new cool.

"Free: The Future of a Radical Price" by Chris Anderson may bring us the great perspective on how the internet technology craft the new fashion of the innovative frugality to change the world radically.

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Flying is cool, can we make aviation industry a new cool again

Every industry need to have sense of urgency to build up the very solid diversified thought leadership team in this competitive, multi-polar new global landscape,

Flying over to the sky is almost all our childhood dream; Airline industry make our dreams come true; It changes human’s life, the world, and expand our horizon forever. However, the industry has been suffering so deep for so long with so many issue; What can we help rejuvenate this legendary industry, how can we make it a new cool industry to work for and deliver the cool travel solution both the business and consumers can count on?



1.Premium Customer Service:
The core value of modern aviation in 21st century is to deliver the premium customer service, to make the travel a great lifetime experience on the fly: By taking advantage of the cutting-edge technology, the airlines could provide the most convenient service for boarding, communication, entertainment., etc.

Web 2.0 are great sets of tool to help airline regain their reputation, when one customer distributed his broken-guitar story online, it damaged the image of United Airline severely, but with those web 2.0 tools, UL could also turn around and build up more solid customer-friendly PR and strategy in the long term.

2.Diversified Leadership Team
Every industry need to have sense of urgency to build up the very solid diversified thought leadership team in this competitive, multi-polar new global landscape, the leaders with mission and purpose, from different culture, industry, background may, bring up the new passion, brainstorm the fresh idea, think from the all angles, and instill the great confidence into the whole industry.

3.High Employee Moral
When the industry has been in the downturn spiral for a while, how to make the employee to hold on their trust and moral, share their wisdom, keep their sense of humor, to find their Mojo? they are the one to deliver the best customer service and build up the business loyalty.

4.New Revenue Stream
Beyond selling the air ticket, airlines now also sell the food, the bags, the leg space and even more, those are creative new revenue stream, but will those new charges deteriorate the airline credibility in the long term or it actually brighten the fair finance perspective with customers’ understanding.

Can airline create new revenue stream even more aggressively, cross-industry, cross-boarder., etc. and how, the diversified leadership team may bring up more possibilities.

5. Optimized Air Travel Solutions
To make every airline like Virgin, founded by Sir Richard Branson, with so many business portfolios involving in so many industries may not be so realistic, but airline industry definitely need the entrepreneurial spirit, to grow beyond the limit, the sky has no limit anyway.

6.Effect IT Technology
The latest IT technology could be the most imaginable colorful wings for today’s airlines, virtualization, SAAS, web 2.0, cloud computing may not possibly replace those legacy system overnight, but the effective technologies are no doubt the most competitive tools to fashion the airlines business strategy, and talking about today’s buzzword: cloud computing, the airline are naturally on the CLOUD”

7.Fresh Eyes to Improve the Business Process
The world's first airplane was built in the United States by the Wright Brothers in in 1903. The world's first scheduled commercial flight took place on New Year's Day, 1914.

it may be one of the most complicated industries in the world: the powerful and expensive aircraft, the legacy technology, the regulation/de-regulation, the union.etc.

It’s strategic imperative to improve the business process base on the deeper observation from clear-minded, fresh-eyes leaders with cross-industrial, cross-functional, and cross-cultural background.

It’s also cultural imperative to encourage and nurture “speak out” and “can do” entrepreneurial spirit in this legacy industry.

And the latest BPM technology could become the ideal tools to implement those improvements with logic steps and scientific methodology.


8.Aggressive Global Expansion

Airlines, like many other industries, are facing the unprecedented competition ever: legacy airline vs. discount airline, US airline vs. foreign airline., etc, the most forward-looking company would have the sense of urgency to invite the right leader on board, build up the global strategy to penetrate the emerging market with the cutting-edge technologies.

9.Resilient M&A
In this new century, the airline industries need be reshaped, resized and reenergized to fit for the new capacity, the customer-tailored demand in this brand new global landscape.

10. Learn from Leaders
Cathy Pacific and Singapore Airline are the best airlines in the world for the couple of years in the row, southwest maybe the only airline in US makes profit every year even in downturn; Ryanair is the “dollar airline” with creative pricing strategy.

What’s future of aviation industry in 21st century, not only we have more powerful, energy-efficient aircrafts, or the “bigger is better” M&A strategy, we also need the inspirational leader with mission and purpose, the dedicated employee with great Mojo to deliver the superior customer service on the fly.

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SAAS Met Cloud in 2010’s SAASCON

SAAS is proven business model to improve ROI, that’s why HBR credit it as the “best business model in the world”, how bout PAAS, IAAS , the other cloud creatures

A couple of observations from this year’s event:

1. SAAS met Cloud in this year’s event, though a few CIOs mentioned they don’t have well-established cloud strategy yet, definitely almost every presenters think cloud phenomena is beyond the buzzword now;

2. Microsoft sponsor the event, take the leadership to move applications into the cloud, but how can they differentiate their offering from GOOGLE? Can they also take the initiative to set up the policy and cloud governance?

3. Less exhibition booths compared to last two years, maybe because there’re so many cloud related conferences recently, or economy is still tough?

4. SAAS is proven business model to improve ROI, that’s why HBR credit it as the “best business model in the world”, how bout PAAS, IAAS , the other cloud creatures?

5. Quite many female audiences stand up on the cloud, but no female panelists or female CIO to deliver the presentation, the cloud is still not so colorful.


Microsoft may make the cloud a little bit crowed, but they may bring up some “water vapor” into the Cloud, become the true rainmaker.

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Embrace the Mother Nature

It’s so enjoyable to visit Filoli Estate –one of the finest country estates of the early 20th century. It’s located in Woodside, CA, Filoli was built for Mr. and Mrs. William Bowers Bourn, prominent San Franciscans whose chief source of wealth was the Empire Mine, a hard-rock gold mine in Grass Valley, California.

Filoli, the estate’s name reflects Mr. Bowers’ credo: “Fight for a just cause; Love your fellow man; Live a good life.”, Mr. Bowers’ success story is the legendary American dream in last century.

We’ve just been through the one of the toughest recession time in our life, economically many of us feel suffering, but when we take some time to embrace the mother nature, breathe the fresh air, smell the flowers, we feel refreshed, relieved and rejuvenated.

In the emerging economies such as China and India, fast-growing economic engine leapfrog the new generation of wealthy white-class families with great purchasing power, but even their life are not perfect. Each time before I travel back, when I call my sister for any gift she like, her answer is wise somehow: “ we can get anything in Shang Hai now, if you have to bring, just bring us a bottle of fresh air or a bunch of California Sunshine!”

Mother Nature is the precious gift we could ever have, in developing world, the fast growing economy should be built on improved productivity with respect of mother nature;

In developed world, the latest technology such as clean tech and solar are more directly touch the earth, refine and shine the mother nature, and they bring up the best hope to the next economy booming

Thank you for volunteering father and daughter tour guide Lowell and Jeanne to present us the best Filoli with enriched natural education knowledge. And thanks Nimitz to invite me!

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How to Build up the Emotionally Intelligent Business after BIG RECESSION

NI is the most sophisticated intelligence with dynamic analysis processes.

What are the differences between all sorts of intelligences, and how do we develop and master them to build up the modern business?

Artificial Intelligence: AI is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it.

Business Intelligence: BI refers to computer-based techniques used in spotting, digging out, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products or departments or associated costs and incomes, performance intelligence and predictive analysis., etc. BI is the latest version of AI from a business perspective in the 21st century.

Collective Intelligence: CI refers to people and computers connected in ways that seem intelligent, social networks and web 2.0 technology provide a great platform to develop CI.

Natural Intelligence: NI is the human's intelligence, it is all the systems of control present in biology. The five principles such as: feeling, coherence, action, finitization and analysis reflect the sophistication of NI.

AI and BI can learn, just like natural intelligence (NI). When programmed to, Artificial Intelligence can sense changes in its environment and react accordingly. It can then refer to the ways it reacted to previous changes to help decide what to do the next time a similar change occurs.

One big difference between Artificial Intelligence and natural intelligence is the fact that natural intelligence can forget and lose information. Artificial Intelligence could do this if it was programmed to do so, but this would be counter-productive.

Another big difference is accuracy. Artificial Intelligence, when given the same information can be exact, every time with speed. When natural intelligence is given the same information, it can not be as exact and is slower.

From the surface, AI seems more promising and accurate than NI, however, as we clarified, NI is the most sophisticated intelligence with dynamic analysis processes, and it’s the critical success factor to make intelligent business decisions.

Essentially NI is still the crown of all kinds of intelligence, and I believe with BI + CI, the senior executives with high NI could become more logical business decision-makers to develop emotionally intelligent businesses, and not only analyze How the Mighty Fall, but also avoid it.

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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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