Brussels -the Capital City of Belgium, with Christmas Fairy Tales Theme

Explore deeper by walking through the city of Brussels - watching over the top tower, passing through palace gates, walking into the library and hanging around into Winter wonders, enjoying the imaginary creatures in the park. 

My train pass was almost expired, so I decided to take the train from Munich to Brussels Belgium. Brussels is Belgium’s capital and home to the European Union headquarters. However, there is no direct train. I have to transfer to Frankfurt, where I visited for the book fair in mid-October.

As the train I took from Munich to Frankfurt got delayed, I missed the scheduled train from Frankfurt to Brussels, my plan got disrupted again, I had to take another train. When arriving in Brussels it’s already dark; for safety concerns, I decided to take taxi to get to the hotel. Although it’s only 1.5 km away, the driver did over charge without a meter reader. The hotel is in a central location with a walking distance to many tour spots nearby. After enjoying the peaceful night in the hotel, on the second morning, I walked around the nearby city center full of scenery with holiday themes and Christmas decorations. The castles with golden tower tips are shining under the sun. The Belgium chocolate gift shops were decorated with holiday ornaments in the grand square of Brussels.

The grand place was crowded with tourists looking magnificent and charming. After hanging around in the square walking into the light lid Herbert gallery across the street there are all sorts of shops which sell gifts, crafts clothing cozy and delighted in the chilly winter day.

Outside on the street, there are marketplaces set up with holiday booths which sell handcrafted gifts, cool holiday merchandise. It is truly a Christmas town mixing local and global with holiday spirit.

As usual, I asked quite a few global strangers about directions for my next destination - Royal Palace of Brussels. They are all friendly and help me navigate through the direction, and wish me luck. I walked through the long street full of brand name stores and shopping centers which are all decorated with holiday lights. It gives me the strong feeling that Brussels is a walkable city friendly. I passed through the famous chocolate manufacturer Godiva office building without knowing there is a small chocolate village museum nearby until I checked the map and visited there the second day. I couldn’t believe I had already been there the day before.

I also spent a morning visiting the European Union and parliament building: Parlamentarium. Although it’s only part of space opening to the public it brought me the theme of democracy and governance disciplines. After that I visited the nearby nature science museum enjoying seeing samples of all sorts of creatures from giant dinosaurs to tiny insects from wild camouflaged animals in the tropical forests to the enormous ocean creatures and various birds in the sky and human evolution history. Lots of students came here to do their science research. It's a very educational place.

In the afternoon, I took the train to the famous science museum Atomium - the tower with 102 m tall to reach the sky. It was built for the 1958 World fair to celebrate the atomic age. Each of the metal spheres is 18 meters in diameter. After taking the elevator going up to the top you can oversee the city with 360 degrees. On the way down, there is the museum of design and architecture introduction. There are different light spectrums surrounding the stairs and elevator that make the building mysterious and interesting. Overall speaking, it is a good educational museum with its unique theme. I skipped the other nearby tour spot- mini-europe as I just visited quite many nations in Europe in the recent months.

On the way back by subways, I also stopped by the Botanical garden which has a set of fair ladies and gentlemen sculptures, a water fountain, flowers and trees.

On the third day I decided to explore deeper by walking through the city Brussels - watching over the top tower, passing through palace gates, walking into the library and hanging around into Winter wonders, enjoying the imaginary creatures in park near Trone palace, tasting diverse food in the downtown and watching Christmas trees glowing the lights all over the place, discovering the hidden gems in this fairytale like city.

It is enjoyable but also exhausting. I packed the luggage and left on the second day. What a holiday journey in this lovely city -Brussels with Christmas lighting and a fairy tale theme.


Brussels facts:

Population and education levels: Almost one third of the population has high education, and people in the city Brussel have the highest education in Belgium.

Languages: Belgium has three official languages: French, Dutch and German

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Initiativestogrowprofessionalcapabilities

Professional competency development and maturity require character, vision, knowledge, determination, persistence, discipline, dedication, and practice in the present and a continuum.

We are experiencing a major paradigm shift from a siloed industrial age to a hyperconnected digital era. These changes reshape our thinking and recast the way we view ourselves, the societal ecosystems of which we are a part. 

 Global professionals should keep exploring themselves, integrating the existing building blocks or recombining existing capabilities into high-integral capabilities for solving complex problems and making a high impact.

Professional capability and value: Either individually or at the organizational level, in order to survive fierce competition and rapid changes, you need to not only have the capability necessities to “keep the lights on,” now; but also build differentiated professional competency. The purpose of developing professional capabilities is to create value and solve problems large or small. Value creation is both art and science by balancing short-term gain and long-term advantage.

It is a hybrid, networked environment in which powerful collaboration platforms and computing technologies enable seamless conversations and cross-functional collaboration. Talented employees with a growth mind continue their journey to discover their purpose, develop professional capabilities, and create values coherently. If there are no values "glue" to keep everyone motivated by the collective endeavor, then you're not effective in overcoming common challenges.

Professional capability & potentiality: Capabilities enable people to achieve high-performance results. High potential enables people to explore themselves further and create high performance in the future. People with high potential are usually more innovative because they see unique patterns and make fresh connections that others overlook. So today’s business professionals should keep discovering their inner strength and talent, it’s whatever you are motivated to work on; investigating your passion: defining your work tasks, and things you want to do and do better than others.

Organizations today need people with strong capability to achieve high performance, they also need to keep discovering talent and encourage people to unleash their full potential. Talent management should make an objective assessment: How well does the individual continue to perform and grow in their current roles; how likely are they able to take on new challenges at work, rapidly learn, and grow into next-level roles; how well they can be self-motivated to utilize the full potential and make a big impact. You need to look at all aspects of individual traits, work ethic, capability, influence, creativity, experience, and performance, and the hidden potential each employee has if given the opportunity to excel.

Professional capability and humility: Capabilities bring confidence to people; while confidence enables people to build more professional capabilities. But the overdose of ego stops people from learning and growing. Global professionals with the right mix of ability and humility have the confidence and willingness to admit when they might be wrong, and they are ready to say "I don't know." With humility, they are open to learning about themselves, and others, and love new ideas, so they can develop differentiated capabilities constantly.

It is important to create and nurture an environment in which humility is appreciated, curiosity is encouraged, and capabilities can be developed either individually or collectively. It is a highly- mature leadership team that helps to elevate team morality and encourage others to rise to the challenge by believing everyone is capable of discovering themselves and developing their own strength into differentiated capabilities; and if necessary, being willing to look to others to help you reach your goal instead of going it alone.

All knowledge professionals today need to continue to learn, develop a fitting mindset; build professional capabilities continually. Professional capability views seem to be more open to considering both internal or external sourcing and provide a level of abstraction that allows more open considerations from the multidimensional lens. Professional competency development and maturity require character, vision, knowledge, determination, persistence, discipline, dedication, and practice in the present and a continuum.

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Influence with Breadth, Depth, Strength

In order to untangle an unprecedented level of complexity, you need to reach a stage to assess the logic of everything, see things from different angles, and enhance the breadth, depth and strength of understanding.

We are experiencing a major paradigm shift from the industrial age with knowledge scarcity to the digital era with information abundance, and we are shaping the creative economy to advance humanity constantly. In fact, the rapid change, abundant knowledge, and diversified global society requires more advanced mindsets and differentiated capabilities. Today’s interdisciplinary leaders and professionals need to have a unique insight to bridge the multitude of gaps and demonstrate learning agility to lead innovation. A true global organization dedicated to bridge the gaps and unleash collective human potential.

Breadth of vision: Tunnel vision happens at every side of the fence, commercial and technical, under the silo walls. As people ignore the relevance of each other’s works; when they work as a group or siloed function, not as a cohesive team holistically. Because lack of clear vision, tunnel vision or “vision existing on the paper only” are all sorts of traps which mislead management, disable changeability, and decelerate business speed. With the new characteristics of global businesses such as hyper-connectivity, hyper-interdependence, and hyper-competition, the digital leaders today need to be constantly visible by sharing a clear vision and enabling others to share it as well.

Innovation is a means, not an end. If you don’t know where you want to go, you are unlikely to get there. The breadth of innovation is dependent on the interdisciplinary understanding of the patterns and information clues behind the puzzle. So the breadth of strategy needs to go beyond silo thinking and touch the ecosystem perspective, appreciate collective insight and embrace interdisciplinary knowledge.

Depth of gravity: The management needs to provide coherence between actual capability and the objectives that have been defined, and addresses in outline how the strategic objectives will be achieved, which includes exploring your center of gravity to build momentum and shape long term organizational competencies. Gravitas can be defined to mean substance, quintessence, or dignified demeanor. It's about how you can generate specific energy in yourself to create the authentic impact you choose consciously .

Gravitas is a mindset and philosophy. Not only does wisdom have dimensions, but also it has “gravity.” The gravitas in a leader is like a karat in the diamond; coming from his/her character, judgmental skills, the right mix of confidence and humility. It means consistency, persistence, confidence, and humility. You can only know what you know, but there are more dimensions which you don’t know; as there’s known unknown and unknown unknown. Great leaders share their breadth and depth of fresh insight, and lead forward step-wisely.

Strength of interdisciplinarity: The truth is in the eye of the beholder. Understand different perspectives without pushing toward the one that you think is the truth. It comes from data void of analogy, bias, irrelevant noise, and complexity, resulting in a clear uncompromised focus on what’s most important. In reality, people play different roles with their set of knowledge and disciplines. From a problem-solving perspective, everybody involved with the process thinks they know how it works and where the issues are, but putting independent eyes upon, it almost always ends up painting a somewhat different picture. So it’s more critical than ever to gain cross-disciplinary knowledge for discovering the multitude of issues in order to deal with complexity effectively.

We are encouraged to look for an experience of truth, the unfolding of wisdom by those who have gone beyond conventional wisdom. If you stand at the right angle to see from different angles, you know even they are different, but hold part of the truth in it. Today, we see more of a sharing between disciplines of neuroscience, physics, sociology, biology, psychology and philosophical practices in trying to answer tough questions and deal with complex issues in human society. It’s always important to strike the multitude of digital balances which impact each other in order to achieve a state of dynamic equilibrium.

People are complex, businesses are complex., societies are complex. Today’s business problems become over-complex and interdependent. In order to untangle an unprecedented level of complexity, you need to reach a stage to assess the logic of everything, see things from different angles, and enhance the breadth, depth and strength of understanding. You don’t need to agree completely with the other side's viewpoints, but you can always gain empathy, unique insight, and fresh perspective to see things from the other angle and figure out alternative solutions creatively.

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Lesson Learned: Falling down and Moving Forward

Be humble! We all fall down physically or spiritually sometimes, but we need to learn the lessons and have courage to move forward again.

It’s another chilly rainy day, I need to change the hotel from the southern part of London to the west. Before checking out, I had to move my two luggage downstairs as there was no elevator available there.

The stairs were narrow and steep, and the handle only existed on the right side when I walked down. First, I carried my large luggage, I held the handle and used my left hand to lift the luggage down step by step reluctantly. Then I went back upstairs to carry my smaller luggage. I thought I could make it without holding the handle. Unfortunately, halfway down, I fell down, and the luggage was rolling down the stairs as well. It was very dangerous, and the falling could have hurt me significantly. But, I am OK, because it is winter, the thick dresses protect me, I can stand up and move forward continuously.

Lessons learned: Be cautious and resilient, safety is always important; do not underestimate the risks or overestimate your strength, get the support you need; be careful and courageous at the same time.

Be humble! We all fall down physically or spiritually sometimes, but we need to learn the lessons and have courage to move forward again.

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Ponder the Moment of truth

There are-moment of truth, diverse common sense, cultural customs, around the world; there is old and new; right and wrong all over the place…

We all have-

a special moment,

a day,

a trip,

a season to-

celebrate,

Another holiday is coming!

I saw -

thousands of Christmas trees,

glittering across the city;

I watched over -

hundreds of-

fair ladies & gentlemen’ statues,

over the world;

I walked through-

numerous mother rivers,

flowing forward;

father gorges standing tall,

nourishing people with-

deep love, true caring…

I smell-

all sorts of aromas from-

variety of plants;

I tasted different flavors of chocolates,

melt through my mouth…

my eyes are opening with curiosity;

my mind keep connecting-

the dots unusually;

my gut feeling becomes stronger,

when interacting with nature;

my foot print go global to -

explore-

the world of difference…

There are-

moment of truth,

diverse common sense,

cultural customs,

around the world;

there is old and new;

right and wrong,

conflicts, arguments

all over the place;.

can we become-

more insightful,

build a bridge to-

mind the gaps,

gain empathy,

lead the

change we would like to see

influentially?

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Illumination

Isn't it a tough journey to explore the world, pursue the digital way of brainstorming, innovating, motivating, story-telling?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 10 million page views with 11,600+ blog postings in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 29 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight of innovation leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

Influence, Inclusion, Intrapreneurship We live in such a diverse world with unpredictability, uncertainty, exponential growth of information, and increasing pace of changes. Organizations across vertical sectors are transforming from industrial silos to hyper connected digital businesses. An innovative leader has the interdisciplinary knowledge and cross-functional experience to connect unusual dots, promote a healthy climate for innovation, inspire team members to create a portfolio of fresh ideas, coach team members on innovation management practices and how to overcome the barriers to achieve innovation excellence.

Influential Characteristics of Corporate BoDs Business ecosystem environment becomes more dynamic, organizations need to hunt for qualified and independent Board members who are aware of their responsibilities and duty to the shareholders and have a good understanding of the organization's strategic direction and its business alternatives.

Innovation The digital era upon us is about abundant information and increasing pace of changes. There are both known unknown and unknown unknown. The workforce today is multigenerational, multicultural, and multi-devicing and the digital workplaces are a melting pot of hyperdiversity. The global society becomes hyper connected and interdependent, it is important to develop an open atmosphere with candid communication, fortify cross-functional learning, communication, and coordination based on quality information, expertise, and responsibility for achieving innovation excellence.

Initiatives Organizations become more complex and dynamic with an increasing pace of changes. Change management is a core discipline and strategic policy in business management. Change Management has to make an objective assessment of whether change efforts achieve the expected business results. At the end of the day, change is never for its own sake, it’s about business improvement, innovation for achieving higher than expected business value.

Innovateglobalsociety We live in a more dynamic, ambiguous and globally distributed world, with exponential growth of information and increasing opace of changes. We global citizens are experiencing the same world but perhaps perceive it subjectively. Because each mindset filters information differently, thinks differently, learns differently, decides and acts differently. It's imperative to deepen understanding of global issues contextually and dealing with common challenges cross-industry or cross-geographical locations smoothly, in order to harness global communication, foster innovation, enforce governance on the global scale, and advance humanity to the next level.

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking of new ideas; sharing and innovating. It’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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Lavender Hill

I didn’t see the lavender plants blossom in the winter season. But in the knowledge land, I can still smell the lavender aroma, reach the wisdom hill, see things differently and explore nature and the world with intellectual curiosity.

It is chilly outside in the winter season in London, the place my hotel was located had a beautiful name: Lavender Hill.

There are two large parks nearby. The lavender hill garden and the battersea park. Both parks are spacious with trees and meadow, people go there to do exercise. The parks look a bit gray in the dark winter day. I am pondering: Where are those beautiful aromatic lavender plants which made my favorite tea. The part of the park I walked through was flat, is there any hill in the park to reach the new spirit height? Where can I smell the unique aroma of Lavender?

I walked around the large park and turn left back to the street, went to the local library to read some books. The library is warm, but there are not so many seats in the front hall, the very friendly librarian reminded me that there is another study room hidden inside is very spacious, like the Bible study hall in the church. The environment is very peaceful. Although it is the holiday break, many students sit there studying dedicatedly

I didn’t see the lavender plants blossom in the winter season, I didn't drink Lavender tea on that chilly morning. But in the knowledge land, I can still smell the lavender aroma, feel warm inside, reach the wisdom hill, see things differently explore nature and the world with intellectual curiosity.

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Up to the Summit of the Eiffel Tower

Standing firmly under- strong wind, heavy rain, she is not shaky; holding up- thousands of people inside, she is not fragile; shining up with- holiday light, she is not cold; she is - elegant, firm, magnificent Paris landmark.

In the rainy windy chilly morning,

City of Paris hasn’t -

woken up, completely;

I walked across -

the bank of river Seine

listened to -

water flowing forward, smoothly

watched over -

Eiffel Tower, admirably..


She is tall, slender, magnificent,

accompanying her mother river

guarding around her city,

greeting her people,

worldwide visitors,

open-armly.

Lift up to-

the summit of the tower,

I feel -

a moment of solitude;

the city downward turns to-

be smaller and smaller,

the street lights faded away suddenly.

beautiful gardens become -

little dots;

the landscape views are blurred with-

drizzling raindrops.



Stand on the top makes us -

feel different,

we cannot open the windows,

on the top of the tower;

but we could always open-

our mind to -

touch the sky with-

flying clouds,

fresh air,

beam of sunlight.

Going down, down again until -

my feet touch the ground,

voice mix with noise bring us back to-

co-shared world;

mundane reality,

stroll across the bridge to -

watch over-

Eiffel Tower from-

different angle:

Standing firmly under-

strong wind, heavy rain,

she is not shaky;

holding up-

thousands of people inside

she is not fragile;

shining up with-

holiday light,

she is not cold;

she is -

elegant,

firm,

magnificent Paris landmark

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Influence, Inclusion, Intrapreneurship

As innovation leaders manifest their visions, they base their leadership on an inspirational, positive picture of the future, as well as a clear sense of direction as to how to get there.

We live in such a diverse world with unpredictability, uncertainty, exponential growth of information, and increasing pace of changes. Organizations across vertical sectors are transforming from industrial silos to hyper connected digital businesses.

 An innovative leader has the interdisciplinary knowledge and cross-functional experience to connect unusual dots, promote a healthy climate for innovation, inspire team members to create a portfolio of fresh ideas, coach team members on innovation management practices and how to overcome the barriers to achieve innovation excellence.

Inclusiveness: Innovation leadership is the capacity to think, communicate, and act beyond the boundaries that limit effectiveness. We can learn a lot from different mindsets, cultures and positions, so organizations as a whole can be competitive enough to keep surging further. To establish a high-performance organization, corporate leaders should always look for the capabilities and skills that they don't have so that they can build a winning team and complement each other, and build an inclusive culture. They are able to create harmony via diversity in unity.

As the global workforce becomes more diversified, you have to continue to stress those new ideas if they are not woven into the organization, or if they are not part of a unified purpose. The business leaders must work with the right mindset to create an inclusive organization with every dip in the business lifecycle, It’s a strategic imperative to integrate the multidimensional hyper-diversity such as cognitive diversity, creative diversity, skill diversity, cultural diversity, and personality diversity, etc, to build competitive teams for achieving high performance.

Intrapreneurship: Practicing intrapreneurship is about creating the future via learning, experimenting, and discovering, with high-level risk intelligence to convert a problem into an opportunity. Practicing intrapreneurship also means the enterprise should go smarter and more flexible, with the right dose of risk tolerance to pioneering the development of new products, services, processes through converting a problem into an opportunity, in order to solve it creatively. Intrapreneurship activities are crucial for moving business up to the growth trajectory.

Entrepreneurs leaders are able to think out of the box, bend some rules in order to discover the new path of growth or figure out different ways to solve problems. Practicing intrapreneurship in a large organization also doesn’t mean getting rid of all rules. Businesses have limited resources and budgets, so it is important to calculate risks, invest wisely. Every organization needs to develop its tailored intrapreneurship practices by leveraging effective technologies, tools, or methodologies and apply them wisely with the expertise to really add value and harness intrapreneurship.

Influence: Being a leader takes people to have a desire to do better than others while creating themselves a platform of influence wherever they are. Influence is made by envisioning, inspiring, bridging, encouraging others toward your vision by communicating empathetically, orchestrating collaboratively. Organizational leaders need to fully understand the issue and decide how to remedy, and influence high performance culture. They have the ability to influence peers as they undertake a broad range of crucial decisions involving the issues such as strategy, talent management, innovation, etc. They present high levels of ethics, responsibility, integrity, and empathy.

In the hyper-connected and interdependent knowledge abundant global society, to make a long-lasting influence, it is important to identify and close the gap between knowledge and insight, and be able to shape other people's views or opinions towards your own views or perspectives. Insightful experts are business evolution influencers. They practice their expert power to make influence via knowledge sharing and insightful persuasion to connect the minds and improve leadership influence.

Leadership is about vision and directions that steer the organization in the right direction. As innovation leaders manifest their visions, they base their leadership on an inspirational, positive picture of the future, as well as a clear sense of direction as to how to get there. The more "innovative leaders" we have, the better world we can build together.

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London Sightseeing & Museums

We keep learning from those condensed versions of human heritage and refined into fresh insights and keep reinventing humanity.

After walking through a few famous city parks. I decided to learn more about anthropology by visiting a few museums in London. I thought I would go to the natural history museum first, but I passed through the science museum when they just opened the door in the morning. Irresistibly, I went there again although I just visited last month.

Science Museum: The exhibition on the ground floor focuses on some industrial technologies such as engines, automobiles, and spaces. But there is not enough content for the world of patterns or the future of the world from an adult perspective. But there are quite many fun activities for children. So I decided to see a 3D movie: “ Our beautiful planet” at 11am in the morning. Before that, I still have enough time to walk through the first, second and third floor exhibition halls.

On the first floor of the museum, there are clocks or other precision instruments exhibition, with written introductions about science development history in England as science has been called nature philosophy hundreds of years ago. There is also a mathematical exhibition on the other side of the floor, demonstrating different shapes and scales of industrial designs, articulating the proportions and perspectives of mathematics concepts.

Because of my engineering background I like the “Technician” session on the third floor. It introduced quite many real world female and male science and technology professionals and what their works are. It is educational as it inspires us to reimagine the future of work and how technology impacts society development and conveys gender equality in the modern professional world. Talented people can do complex and meaningful work to create value. There are some audio introductions for the medical equipment’s exhibition bringing knowledge on how technology progresses impacts our daily life. I just walk through the light exhibition on the third floor quickly, and then went to see the movie about our beautiful planet.

Although I have watched quite a few videos about the topic before The 3D experience makes the view more vivid and impressive. The staff in the international space station had a great performance. Our planet looks truly amazing both at day and night The point is how to sustain and renew its energy. It is an educational museum. Many kids from toddlers to teenagers come here to learn and understand science. If there are more interactive experiments or immersive experiences, that would be more fun and memorable.

Nature Science Museum: In the afternoon, I went to the Natural Science museum inside a grand architectural building nearby. Very impressive hallways with dinosaur statues and some sample creatures. I went to the coffee shop and ordered English tea, so I can take a rest there. After recharging, I visited the mineral/gemstone exhibition. Great collection there, very educational.

There are sculptures of Charles Darwin and a few other gentlemen biologists, but I didn’t find our female ancestors’ sculptures. I believe there are quite many lady naturalists and scientists behind the scenes in that eta, who were dedicated to lots of biological experiments and sampling. The buildings of natural science have high ceilings, magnificently-designed structures, strong pillars, and spacious hallways. So besides studying nature and history, we can appreciate the art of architecture as well.

Nature science, art, philosophy, culture are all interdisciplinary practices. We keep learning from those condensed versions of human heritage and refined into fresh insights and keep reinventing humanity.

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Innovation

Information abundance and the unprecedented level of convenience brought by digital technology opens a new chapter of personalized learning, people-centric innovation.

The digital era upon us is about abundant information and increasing pace of changes. There are both known unknown and unknown unknown. The workforce today is multigenerational, multicultural, and multi-devicing and the digital workplaces are a melting pot of hyperdiversity. 

The global society becomes hyper connected and interdependent, it is important to develop an open atmosphere with candid communication, fortify cross-functional learning, communication, and coordination based on quality information, expertise, and responsibility for achieving innovation excellence.

Relax to renew fresh energy: It is the holiday season, people start relaxing and recharging themselves. When we pause to take a breath, we have an opportunity to consolidate, assimilate and understand. Relaxation should not lead to complacency, but to renew fresh energy, and spur innovation significantly.

Create silence-listening from the heart and feel recharged, get inspired in quiet spaces with a peace of mind. Focus on individual capabilities and potential to learn by riding the learning curve faster, and innovate smoothly. You may not be able to foresee specific instances of futures, but you can imagine general classes and positions to take advantage of/shape/mitigate what is then occurring, as well as how to co-shape it together.

See around the corner, and transcend the interdisciplinary knowledge to fresh insight, leading to innovative ways to solve problems: The world becomes more complex and diverse, it’s always critical to gain sufficient knowledge and unique insight to observe deeper and see around the corner. With hyper connected and over complex digital new normal, the border of knowledge domains is blurred and the scope of knowledge is expanded in the continual base. Contextualization is about broadening the understanding of a specific cause and effect in a specific context or the core issues of a situation which leads to true understanding and resolution.

Running an innovative business is fundamentally about how to apply innovation logic to solve problems, implement ideas, and guild teams to make things happen timely. To overcome the common challenges and advance the human race, we have to really dig beneath the superficial layer, see around the corner and capture unique insight to see things differently. With a clear vision plus a set of next practices, we are able to evolve, adapt and innovate, without fear of changes. and transcend the interdisciplinary knowledge, to solve them innovatively.

Organizational hierarchy must balance the welfare, freedom, and responsibilities to orchestrate innovation: Silo creates the blind spot in decision making and causes narrow-mindedness in business change. Without a cross-functional, end-to-end perspective across the entire enterprise, managers tend to focus on their own functions or departments. Collective learning and collaboration harnesses innovation. The innovation collaboration teams embraced multiple disciplines, and understood how systems work, and this yielded competitive advantage.

Because knowing something is not the same as understanding it, understanding it doesn’t mean you can communicate it clearly; or capture fresh insight to generate fresh ideas effectively. To harness collective innovation, innovative leaders and professionals today need to leverage multidimensional thought processes, strategic reasoning skills, challenging existing thoughts, knowledge, or standards, seeking additional information and experience, and applying interdisciplinary logic to achieve innovation coherence.

Information abundance and the unprecedented level of convenience brought by digital technology opens a new chapter of personalized learning, people-centric innovation. The good or bad innovation would depend on the business’s attitude to connect the right dots and nourish a culture of creativity, its aptitude to manage ideas and improve the success rate of innovation management.

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London Hyde Park Winter Wonderland Amusement Park

You can discover places you would like to visit and have a good life experience here. So learn to be a sophisticated Londoner.

As my hotel in London this week is nearby Kensington Gardens so I decided to visit the winter wonderland in the Hyde Park. I passed through the spacious Kensington garden in which lots of people were doing exercise there. 

It is winter time, the trees turn yellowish. You can see the castle tip far away surrounded by dark clouds remotely. It is quiet and slightly chilly there, compared to my last visit a month ago - Winter is truly coming, the day becomes shorter and chilly.

Then I passed through the road going to the Hyde park across the street. Because of holiday activities, there are more tourists there. There is a swan sculpture greeting people near the gate And walking on the lake bank, there are quite a lot of swans and other breeds of birds swimming around. That makes the park look energetic and full of energy.

Tall Swans with pigeons playing around on the river bank: Unbelievably near the winter wonderland on the other side of the lake bank, there are quite many tall beautiful swans standing on the shore along with a group of pigeons. That really creates unique scene and brightens the winter day, they cheer up tourists, full of holiday delight. Birds catch up the food residues the tourists spilled on the ground. But smaller birds got them all, elegant swans didn’t get enough. The taller, beautiful swans feel unhappy, but they didn’t bully little birds, and still stand there calmly, greet tourists friendly. So I put some chocolate cake pieces into the coffee cup, brought to Swans, who have their long necks to reach it. We all have a responsibility to make the world fairer, happier, especially in the holiday season.

 

Winter Wonderland Amusement Park: After that, I went to the Winter wonderland. It is actually the amusement park similar to Six Flag with Christmas lighting and ornaments. There are lots of gift shops, restaurants and game booths spread around; rolling coasters, ice skating, magic spinning wheels, etc. Both kids and adults can have some fun activities here. The organizers are thoughtful. Lots of people out of London come here to have holiday entertainment. When they exit the park, there is a long distance bus station right around the corner. So they can go back to Oxford or other nearby cities conveniently.

London winter is chilly and warm at the same time. Days become shorter and shorter but when the lights are lit in many places, you can feel the holiday theme; restaurants or coffee shops are always very warm. You are tourists but feel at home; you are alone but not lonely. You are cold but can always find some places warm enough. You can discover places you would like to visit and have a good life experience here. So learn to be a sophisticated Londoner.

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Paris’s Museums and Expos

Learn the Paris Way – mixing natural beauty with human made miracles; blending historical heritage and contemporary ingredients smoothly to create something new and renew humane society constantly.

After taking a high speed train from London to Paris, I took the public transportation to the hotel which was located near a large plaza. It was a rainy day, but I still walked through the different streets across the square. The subway station is at the center of the square, That is Paris, with many square plazas decorated by sculptures, architectural buildings, with polygonal streets distributed in different ways, going beyond just east-west-south-north four directions. 

Often, the pedestrian sidewalks are very spacious, people walk at the center of the road. People in Paris are friendly, they enjoy their afternoon coffee or tea, and they start to decorate the street with holiday lighting and ornaments.

Eiffel Tower: On the morning of the second day when I arrived in Paris, I went to the famous landmark of Paris: The Eiffel Tower, which was designed and built in the 19th century and named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel.

It was a rainy winter day. In the early morning, tourists were already lined up to visit one of the tallest architectural buildings in France, 300 meters to the top. The Eiffel Tower has stood up there firmly hundreds years long, watch over her city vigilantly, and greet people coming to her openly. Unbelievably, this slender tower can hold about 5000 people.

It was crowded, I guess it is so at most of the time and in any season, just be patient. It took me at least half an hour to buy the ticket to get to the top by the elevator. As the weather is cloudy, standing on the top of the tower, the city view is not so clear, the window view is blurred, a little bit disappointed. As I expect to oversee Paris with visual delight. But standing on this 300-meter-tall building, the feeling is still very special, seeing the cloud fly over, and it seems you can touch the sky easily. Although the paranormal view of Paris is not so clear, why don’t we open our mind, close our eyes to imagine it – page by page with its thousands of years of history.

Then, I took the elevator down to the second floor, now the city view become much clear, you can see Paris metropolitan areas from different angles, the Seine river flows across this big city endlessly; the arc of triumph stands up there solidly; the Place de la Concorde lies Avenue des Champs-Elysées. Many people like the second floor the best because of the clear view of the city, more spacious to hang around, and there are quite a few exquisite gift shops, restaurants around. It is chilly outside, but the gift & coffee shop is very warm. You can read books, sip a cup of tea or coffee, and enjoy your time at the tallest building in France.

After leaving the park, you can still watch Eiffel Tower from different angles, on the bridge across the Seine River, or at the hills with some historical architecture buildings. The Eiffel Tower looks elegant, but not arrogant; it guides over the city with its mother river Seine dedicatedly; it is beautiful, but not fragile, stands firmly, watches over the city courageously. The Eiffel Tower is made of iron, but not cold, and it greets people from all over the world warmly. It is omnipresent, you can see the tower from many places and from different angles across the city, isn’t it one of the greatest architectural miracles in the world?

Louvre Museum: The day after, I visited the Louvre Museum, one of the biggest art museums on earth, with a great collection of sculptures, oil paintings, art collections, anthropological discoveries, etc. Statistically, Louvre Museum has more than 380,000 objects and displays 35,000 works of art in eight curatorial departments with more than 60,600 square meters. The collection in Louvre Museum is divided among different curatorial categories: Egyptian Antiquities; Eastern Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities; Islamic, African art. The artwork made of jade is my favorite session. I also like many lady and gentlemen’s sculptures, which are impressively-designed, and artistically crafted.

Honestly to say, it’s a bit overwhelming to see too much artwork in such a short time. Doing deep research takes time and energy. Either appreciating those culture heritages or criticizing those artworks, we should do enough homework, discover our interest, learn and relearn all the time.

So after visiting the museum, I walked across the bank of Seine, let the wind blow up my mind, had the rain clear my face, strolled through the city aimlessly, relaxing myself and becoming the outlier of this culture-enriched metropolitan city. We should capture special scenes to fit our own interest, we need to explore further and deeper to match our own paces. Of course, the next stop I need to go to is the Paris Science museum for the next day.

Paris Science Museum: After a bit of saturation with art, the science museum is the good choice for me to fit my background, pursue interest, reimagine modern society and see through design/manufacture complexity behind the scenes.

The next morning, when I visited the Paris science museum, there were very few people. It looked slightly empty when I walked through the hallway on the first and second floor. Slightly disappointed, as there are not as many collections as I expected, maybe because I’ve already visited quite a few science museums across the world. But there is a big capacity and it touches quite a few areas from space to ocean. There are scientific facts & experiments, planet illustration, robots, ocean creatures, a biological garden with interesting plants. I wish they would create more “WOW” factors to reimagine the future of the world. Later, there are many students coming to do their science projects or play video games on different floors. It's an educational place which enriches people living there, not just for delighting tourists.

Palace of Versailles: After staying in Paris for a couple of days, I learned to be a local, becoming fluent in using transportation tools to go anywhere freely. So I decided to visit the palace of Versailles, as the Château de Versailles is the most famous castle in France, but it is not in downtown Paris, but about 19 kilometers west of Paris, France. You need to take the subway and then train to get there. During the period of my visit, the routing was changed, so again, global strangers in Paris helped me navigate the directions. I spent almost the entire day visiting Versailles on a heavily windy, raining chilly winter day.

 
It is not so disappointing to visit one of the most important historical castles in France, appreciating art, learning history, enjoying a beautiful garden (just too windy on that day), and understanding deeper about western art and anthropology.

There are numerous sculptures, statues, oil paintings about the historical figures, ancient life in France, the wars, people’s daily life, the palace of King Louis IVX, and a lot of art collections. Sculptures of many fair ladies or men, kids are still my favorite sessions, vivid with artistic touch.

Paris exhibitions: In Paris, I also participated in an information technology exhibition and an education expo, getting in touch with the modern pulse of this dynamic and diverse capital city. Seminars are educational, audiences are energetic, and staff are friendly. All of which make the Paris Way – mixing natural beauty with human made miracle; blending historical heritage and contemporary ingredients smoothly to create something new and renew humane society constantly.

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Initiatives

Organizations have to strike the delicate balance between solid and flow, front and behind, up & down, rather than try to manage or control only, in order to avoid pitfalls and create value consistently.

Organizations become more complex and dynamic with an increasing pace of changes. Change management is a core discipline and strategic policy in business management. Change Management has to make an objective assessment of whether change efforts achieve the expected business results.

 At the end of the day, change is never for its own sake, it’s about business improvement, innovation for achieving higher than expected business value.

Solid & Fluid: Running an effective business is to strike the right balance of solid operation and change fluidity. It is about how to connect the old and new, mix the solid and fluid to enforce business confluence. Information confluence means breaking down functional silos or geographical borders to streamline information flow, keep information and knowledge flow in the digital ecosystem, to ensure information integrity and consistency. The goal is about getting the right information to the right people, in the right format at the right time, to make right decisions for solving right problems.

Compared to traditional organizations with overly rigid organizational hierarchy and structure, digital organizations have to be solid enough to keep the business running, but fluid enough to enable ideas flowing in a hyperconnected expanded digital ecosystem with the accelerating speed. The challenge is that information/knowledge is fluid, they cannot be managed like those other hard assets. The focus needs to be on the conditions that allow information and knowledge to flow and generate value. And the idea flow can be streamlined via enforcing cross-functional communication by using common business language, and taking incentives to encourage sharing and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Front & Behind: Forward-looking organizations strive to become people-centric organizations. The front-line workers must be involved in the customer-centric process improvement). Because they often have direct experience working with customers and solving their problems. You would have no process without customer touch-points, therefore, the customer interactions are the route course of all of your internal interactions. Customer exists first, hence the process to serve the customer better comes into existence.

So behind the scenes, it’s important to understand the complexity of information technology, business processes for improving the overall customer experience. Technically, the complexity of aggregate layers of every internal IT system is a burden that often causes conflicts and decelerates business speed. IT is complex, it doesn't mean that IT should continue to complicate matters or increase unnecessary complexity without discipline. Quite many business professionals across disciplines actually work behind the scenes to improve business effectiveness and efficiency.

Up & Down: Neither top-down nor bottom-up change will be successful in isolation. Successful enterprises embrace top down and bottom up with the right mix for achieving high performance results. Change needs to be inspired from top-down, as the top leadership team’s commitment will reassure those who have doubts, make sure that the business moves in the right direction and the strategy time horizon. Top-down change approach is beneficial when the organization maintains coherence while allowing autonomy. On the other hand, a bottom up approach to change is important because people feel more engaged in providing feedback, taking initiatives to identify problems and solve them on time.

In practice, the right mix of bottom-up and top-down change management practices are crucial to both embed change into business DNA and integrate change management into strategy management for driving the long term business transformation success. It’s about leveraging collective knowledge and creativity to develop the business climate for change and drive change success coherently. So Change Management is everyone's responsibility. Change management that addresses the 'people change' aspects of a business initiative is more important than any really cool technology deployment.

Change Management is like GPS, acting in current operations or processes, introducing more progressive ways of achieving the same result, normally for increased efficiency or added value. All these need a vehicle to arrive at the desired point. It is one of many disciplines needed to lead successful business transformation. Organizations have to strike the delicate balance between solid and flow, front and behind, up & down, rather than try to manage or control only, in order to avoid pitfalls and create value consistently.

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Journey to Munich – A Contemporary City covered by Snow

 The entire city of Munich was decorated by snow and looks very pure and peaceful, softening the image of this contemporary city with deep industrial roots.

Reluctantly, the train from Bolzano to Munich would be on schedule at noon. But after the train was leaving the station, the staff notified the passengers that the train would be stopped in Eastwood- the other small town in Italy. Then there is the long distance bus we need to take to get to Munich. That perhaps takes another three hours. Goodness, that would be around 6pm in the dark as the day becomes very short in winter.

What a journey! Looking through the window in the train, the snow-covered Alps mountain is stunningly beautiful with tall trees, bridges and lakes surrounding it. That truly cheers up exhausted passengers. The natural beauty makes this unexpected, exhaustive journey very exciting. That is life- we do our best to plan it; but more often, you cannot plan it completely, let the things or events emerge. Still, enjoy the great things around you.

In the bus, I continue to enjoy the snowy mountain scenes out of the windows that are delightful. It’s truly dark when arriving in Munich which is covered by white snow with slippery roads. Fortunately, my hotel was not so far away from the central station. Again, with global strangers' help, I found the hotel smoothly. What a travel day. I will remember this unexpected trip forever.

So my originally planned two-day journey was shortened to a one-day tour. In the early morning after a good breakfast feast in the hotel, I decided to go to visit the Nymphenburg Palace and its art museum covered by white snow. Although it wasn’t snowing that morning, some buses and trams were canceled and the streets were slippery. After taking off the train it took me about half an hour walking to the palace which was covered by deep snow under the sunshine. The scenery is stunningly beautiful. The museum is decorated with oil paintings and ceiling galleries displaying some historical pictures of the palace.

Munich is one of the famous cities with solid industrial roots. Because of my engineering background I decided to visit Deutsches Museum- the science museum which was advertised as the biggest science museum in Europe. It has a considerably good capacity. But I doubt it is the biggest one. They may have the biggest airplane collection, space and cosmic exhibition. There is also a bridge architecture collection, robot exhibition, a city civic design hall, and a biology exhibition hall. After spending about two hours visiting, I went to the restaurant on the top floor for lunch-delicious soup, with vegetables salad at a reasonable cost. There is very beautiful scenery outside of the window- the clock tower and mountain covered by white snow shine through the cloudy day, full of holiday themes.

After lunch. I went to Isar lake park. Also, the snow makes the lake look so pure, with a group of seagulls on shores, the long river bank decorated by snow-covered castles, trees, and mountains look so beautiful. The fair lady sculpture on the lake shore wears the snow made hat and scarf, protecting the mother river of Munich quietly.

The entire city of Munich was decorated by snow and looks very pure and peaceful, softening the image of this contemporary city with deep industrial roots. Still, the city starts going back to normal from the snow disruption. Trains and buses are convenient, taking you anywhere you want to go.

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