Does Making Arguments Help to Open One’s Mind

An argument opens a new perspective; changing perspective will change your mind.

An argument seeks to change a concept, perspective, idea, and provoke action. With or without a final satisfying outcome! Some ideas may be worth spreading. The argument is an investment of time, by two contrasting sparks, positive vs. negative, right vs. wrong, good vs. bad, etc. Are there benefits of conflict? If so under what circumstance? In what arena? Thought? Communication? Is our necessity for agreement rooted in egocentrism. Or is dialog more effective when contrasted with opposing views? Can making arguments help open one’s mind?

We become argumentative when the beliefs we hold as our foundation are challenged. This is a sign that one is not adaptive; we should be open to new information or a different view. What if our stance is wrong? It is ok to be wrong, as long as we learn, but holding on too tight to our perceived truth is the difference between power vs. force. The power lies in a quest for truth, and your perceived power may actually come from force, which is trying to impose your truth upon another even if it is not absolute. If people argue over an issue, it doesn't mean that they are competing or that they have competing interests. One side may just think that doing something is morally disagreeable, and the other side may think it's fine. That would be missed if both sides or one side misinterpreted the argument as "competing interests." The good intention to make an argument is about understanding the other point of view and learn something from it.

An argument opens a new perspective; changing perspective will change your mind. The truth is the whole coin. Perspective is looking at either heads or tails. A coin is an interesting metaphor as while your focus is on heads you cannot see tails and while looking at tails you cannot see heads. The secret lies in "imagining" a perspective of the whole coin as you aspire towards truth. Beliefs, perspectives, or whatever you want to call them, are those things that we personally hold to be true, but which cannot be conclusively proven. The gray area is because there are serious philosophical differences regarding what proof consists of. Perhaps, unnecessary argumentation is in some way the result of the lack of sincerity of purpose, lack of clarity in communication, lack of openness towards viewpoints of others, and the lack of humility in personality.

Perspective is a personal " truth," and an argument is based on a position of passionate belief in this truth. This is why arguments can be seen as aggressive as a passion has a strong emotional foundation. This is obviously a double-edged sword as emotions can cloud clear thinking, the benefit is that you will "fight" much harder for something you are invested in emotionally. The problem with looking too hard at concepts of truth, perspective, argument, etc. is that the deeper you look, the more likely you can turn into a cynic. It may be helpful to start by distinguishing p-argument -- the process of arguing -- and m-argument -- the messages exchanged during such events. From there: the p-argument implies that the people involved in it want to achieve something: that is, some change in the other party's mind. That is why they are still talking, after all. Their purpose is, for the sincere use of p-argument, to show how the view proposed by one participant A is really supported by (ideally: logically deduced from) believes the other already holds or can be led to hold by providing evidence, or more arguments in their favor. Logic and rhetoric have studied what makes such arguments-m effective and trustworthy, valid so that you can feel confident in accepting the conclusion.

Arguably, humanity argues as much or more about what we ought to do but has not developed good tools for the evaluation of these kinds of arguments, no matter how sanctimoniously officials promise to 'carefully weigh' these pros and cons. Generally speaking, an argument opens a new perspective, evokes paradoxical thinking, you don’t need to agree completely with the other side of viewpoint, but you can always gain empathy, insight, and new perspective to see things from the other angle, and an open mind for information and innovation, that should be the positive driver for making an argument and learn something from it.

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Tuning Digital IT: How to Transform IT From a Business Controller to an Enabler

Run, Grow, and Transform! IT needs to well run a balanced portfolio to both ‘keep the light on’ and drive digital transformation journey.

In today's digital business environment, information is the lifeblood, and technology touches every phase and each corner of the business, IT running in an industrial mode as a business controller or a gatekeeper no longer fits in the fast-changing business circumstances or volatile digital dynamic, how to run IT with the growth mentality at digital speed? How to improve IT organization's maturity, from a controller to an enabler; from a support function to an innovation engine; from monolithic technology-heavy to mosaic information-driven?

IT needs to transform from an order taker to an order shaker: First, IT needs to gain a better understanding of the business and showing that knowledge by talking business to the business; and second, IT's ability to execute and communicate. If you cannot talk business to the business, or cannot communicate effectively about execution, you will leave others with no choice, but to order IT about which will be perceived as the only way to get anything done. IT at all levels needs to understand how the business makes and loses money, and it needs to articulate solutions around this with business language. Some of the most difficult aspects of digital transformation are helping IT professionals truly understand that they need to change, establishing a new culture, communicating, and then engaging so that the old culture does not slip back in.

IT needs to transform from a business controller to an enabler: Second, at the age of IT consumerization, businesses need to understand not only the power and the opportunity information could bring in, but also the potential risks they might get exposed to. If we are living in an information explosive world where technology is pervasive and the masses are looking for their own experiences to introduce new technology into the business, then we are also at a time when it is no longer acceptable for non-IT business people to plead ignorance or be exasperated about the issues of privacy, security, interoperability, etc. If you are savvy enough to be using cloud-based services, then you have to be savvy enough to, at least, understand that there are risks your company will take on as a result of your actions. So while IT must change in many ways, so must the business when it comes to accountability for technologies they want to introduce. The need for other areas of the business to change as well.  

IT has to strike the right balance between innovation and standardization: It is important for IT to standardize the applications and devices customers use to keep support cost down and manage risks effectively. With the advent of web-based and cloud-based solutions, this is no longer a major concern. The user can use almost any client device to access information, so long as the target system is secure and maintained by IT in a consistent and standard way. The new focus and challenge for IT are enabling different user access via the use of different online devices in a secure way. Often there is a huge gap between IT-Business mutual understanding and trust. On one side, most of the business managers still perceive IT organizations as support functions only, not inviting IT to brainstorm strategy; and IT leaders also say that they can't put together a strategic plan because the business doesn't have one. You need to see this as an opportunity - not a roadblock. So while the other areas of the business need to change, IT should ask itself how it can influence - and help - them to do that. After all, business and IT are all on the same team to ensure the organization as a whole can achieve an optimal business result for long term growth.

In the digital age, the CIO needs to be a 'bridge' - a networker and communicator lead his or her CxO colleagues on the digital journey: Enablement comes through being recognized as a trusted partner, and this trust does have to be earned. The technical knowledge and experience are needed, but the days of the overly technical CIO are numbered, modern CIOs need to be business strategists, talent masters, customer advocates and governance champions. Daily execution must absolutely continue. It will take a focused effort to begin moving forward. It begins by addressing the department's culture and mindset. At the same time, work with the rest of the C-suite to build trust and rapport. As you do that, talk to them about their expectations and needs. Show them some of the other things happening in other companies and industries. Build a case with them for IT transformation and show that you are the one to help make that happen. It helps tremendously to have another set of eyes looking at things from a different perspective, and giving you a sounding board for your thoughts and questions.

Run, Grow, and Transform! IT needs to run well a balanced portfolio to both ‘keep the light on’ and drive digital transformation journey. Trust is an extremely important factor in this journey. And it takes very solid leadership, focus, and the ability to build strong relationships with all levels of the organization, IT has to become a business enabler to catalyze the change and improve organizational effectiveness and agility.

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Learning from Failures and Failure Forward

 You can only FAIL BETTER only if you learn from the failures. And then failing is something that prompts you to move ahead.

No one likes failures, but often failure knocks our door before success. Failure in ancient Latin is "defectum," and defectum share the same root of the word "deficere" ("missing" in English) that comes from the ancient Greek αποτυχία means failure. εποτυχία means success. The meaning is that understanding that the difference between failure and success is just in one letter... α and ε ... and just one letter can dramatically change the outcome. If failure is inevitable, either running an organization or undergoing a life journey, how do you fail fast and fail forward?

All failure should be a learning experience, some failures are good and some are bad. Failure is a failure and a fantastic opportunity to learn something and then to have another go. Regardless of if it’s good or bad, the outcome is not anticipated and expected. If you never fail, you're never taking any risks, or you're calling things successful that weren't, or you're exceptionally lucky. So embrace failures. See them as part of life, part of being human and part of what we do. Business teams innovate, create, research and resolve problems and are full of complexity, uncertainty, and unpredictability, failure will happen. If you accept that the occasional failure is a certainty as an outcome of taking risks, then it makes sense to detect and deal with them in an efficient manner.

Failing is something that prompts you to move ahead. The concept is that failure is good, as has been expressed and promulgated in the annals of agile, but only if you "fail well." Basically, there can be a value judgment placed on failures, even expected failures, whether the failure is a "good failure" or a "bad failure" and the deciding measure is not just whether you have learned something or not. There are always two questions to ask, among others when a failure is detected; 1) can you turn this into a success, and 2) could you have detected the problem sooner. We should be learning all the time as we go, on successes just as much as on failures. The amount we learn is probably closely related to the amount of risk we take, failure or otherwise.

“Fail fast" and alike is legitimate only when these basic engineering practices are in place and valued. Emotionally, no one wants to fail even if it is a small failure. So all failures should be avoided. However, one should not be paralyzed fearless if there is a possible failure and one should learn to embrace it. Avoid late failures. Where there is a risk, you want to investigate this early and find out whether or not it can be addressed. If it can't be solved, you want to have spent as little effort as possible in which the only outcome is learning, not valuable software. If you have delivered a reasonable proportion of the scope, and this is precious and being used to good effect already, then there is no failure if you choose to cancel the rest of the scope because it would be of insufficient value to be worth developing. This is much more preferable than delivering the entirety of the original scope, in a system that will not be used effectively and to good value. Calling that a 'success' is either ignorant or mendacious.  There is no value in failure itself, be it fast or slow. The value is how you respond to failure. And how you respond is dependent upon what you learn from it. Only then can "failing fast" be utilized as a tactical advantage.

Risk and uncertainty are inherent in development work, even more so in research work.  Projects can fail, but if you consider agile product developments to be computational experiments then stopping earlier, and then predict because new information about likely return on investment has become available is a perfectly valid outcome. And with risk and uncertainty comes a statistical probability of failure - eventually you will have a failure if you are in the business. If you are in research, one would expect failure; you might go through a whole series of failures until you find one success. In development the balance is pretty much the other way; you may go through a full range of achievements before you have a failure. So, accept that failure is a matter of chance and statistics; that this reality is inherent in development work. You want to avoid failures that you should have known would fail when you started out. There's no shame in knowingly starting something that might succeed, but might fail.. provided we address the risk appropriately. The reality of failure is that it is also a way to learn. Sure nobody wants to fail, but it's going to happen eventually if you are really doing development work; if you really are taking risks and working in uncertain areas. Similarly yes, problems are problems, but they are also opportunities. Failure is a failure, but it is also a learning experience. See both sides of reality, if you insist on seeing reality.

Failure is failure. Life is bitter, we just have to overcome it. Life is a complex process, and we can only improve learning from our errors or others’ mistakes, but the great challenge in the everyday life is to call things with the right words and to be concrete. Some say failure is a subset of opportunities. You need a balanced viewpoint or either you will go too far one way and become risk-averse, or go too far the other and fail to make use of the learning or the learning opportunities. The first outcome means you will not learn as fast as others and you will grow ever more obsolete; the second outcome means you will waste more on failures, spend less time on profitable work than you ought to be doing. You can only FAIL BETTER only if you learn from the failures. And then failing is something that prompts you to move ahead.

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How to Leverage Communication in Harnessing Innovation

Aristotle asserted when it is rational, the whole of all those who participate is greater than the sum of its parts.

Digital is the age of co-creation. Communication is the mechanism that we use to think and learn - without others to communicate with, learning doesn't happen. When we think alone, we are using internalized speech and thus talking to ourselves. When we communicate with others, we are talking to each other to shape our ideas around problem-solving.  However, there are no one-size-fits-all communication styles. In some, talking will be important - and talking at the right time in the process. In others, visuals might be more important. In some language, in some symbols, in some silence; in some solitude in other crowds. To dig through, why is communication crucial to idea development, and how to leverage communication by harnessing innovation?

Digital is the age of co-creating ideas. Everyone has ideaphoria, but some people are just swimming and swirling in the sea of ideas! They just naturally have a higher rate of flow of ideas, a trait known as high Ideaphoria. In a team setting, collective creativity is only achieved through the diversity of thoughts. At the organizational scope, instead of trying to agree or arguing the toss, people begin to work with the jointly produced material. They are almost accidentally collaborating, clarifying, building on each other's ideas, discovering nuances and unexpected relationships, and so on, all of which enriches the thinking and contributes to a fabulously rich output. It’s about co-creating knowledge, sparking possibilities that happen in conversations of purpose and trust - conversations that are relevant, without fear of judgment, allow for expansive thinking, and value the power of "both/and". When the intent of "shaping ideas" is to create value, the act of conversation is core, as a skill in "shifting and shaping the conversation" to enhance the quality of the connection, ideas generated and integration of thoughts. To use the diversity of ideas as a rich source of connectivity and relationship, to harness all the spontaneity of interaction the group is capable of and provoke breakthrough thinking to arrive at creative outcomes that would be otherwise very unlikely. It is important to surround yourself with others who are better at doing what you want to do. If you have this network of people, then getting feedback on your ideas will certainly help shape what comes of them in useful ways.

Communicating an idea to others raises the total cognitive threshold: Each of us has a defined cognitive threshold. An upper limit to the level of complexity that we can handle at any one time or on any one topic. Talking to another person about an idea significantly raises the total cognitive threshold available to analyze the situation. It also allows new pieces of information to be synthesized to generate new knowledge. Talking to others doesn't just allow ideas to be shaped faster - it allows ideas to be generated that wouldn't have been possible within the constraints of your own cognitive threshold. Talking with three to four other capable people seems to be the group with optimum size. At the end of the conversation, you will have new knowledge and most likely will have a clear idea of what to do next.

It is more effective to have a process that enables all those ideas to relate to a structure of meaning: The whole point is that all the ideas are a response to the focus of the inquiry and thus must form part of the creative solution. Going from thinking it inside of our head only to verbalizing it, shifts our brain from one mode of thought and uses another part of our brain. Just like when we go from learning to teaching, we make those shifts that allow us to give the idea with more clarity. Not only figuring out the best options and solutions but also by asking them to explain and focus more on details about what they are trying to achieve. Just doing that helps managers cut through a lot of useless stuff and get directly to the point that they are trying to achieve. All creative processes alternate between divergent and convergent modes, but data/information is mostly gathered at an early stage. The more data/information, the richer the process (not 'mistake potential')

Including the right people in the right roles can help to shape ideas faster. Because we all filter information differently based on our experiences, sharing ideas gives depth and shapes a well-rounded concept. Talking and actively listening to one another also creates excitement which propels good ideas to be formed. Thinking aloud really helps test and refine ideas, the trick is selecting the right audience; one that will listen appropriately, constructively challenge your thinking, stimulate you to seek better answers, but most of all provoke you to listen to their ideas. This not only requires you to be willing to listen but the audience to have something worth saying. The "facet" metaphor has a potentially illusory advantage of brainstorming -- as with the cut facets of a precious stone -- that they imply a mutually reinforcing coherence to sharpen a good idea. True communication alters the direction that an organization can take. It moves the leadership from hierarchical to one where talent can be gleaned from within. Developing that kind of leadership is essential to being successful in innovation management in today's business climate.

Aristotle asserted when it is rational, the whole of all those who participate is greater than the sum of its parts. That is to say, something surplus becomes added in reasoning through issues together, that makes a group more effective than the sum of all its individuals. Creating new ideas starts with a body of experience, a vague or precise goal or vision, and hopefully a good night's sleep! Talking, sharing and collaborating can make a good idea really come to life. Also, particularly where you can't bring everything to fruition yourself, the networking and collaboration of others can really speed things up and ensure your idea is the best it can be.

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How do You Fine Tune the 'Change Management' Process?

Change is not for its own sake, but putting people at the center of the change.

Change is the new normal. However, more than two-thirds of the Change Management effort fails to achieve business expectations. When would you communicate the change imperative to your employees and how would you ensure their buy-in to this new directive? And how do you well tune the “Change Management” processes in managing change with efficiency, effectiveness, and agility?

Ownership and accountability of change management lie in the capable hands of the executive team. Change Management always fails when management thinks they get all the answers, and they come up with a plan in a vacuum and try to sell it. It’s important to have the team own a process by bringing them in early and getting their involvement in creating the process. Your job as management is to make the final call and make sure the team adheres to the process, and they know why it's needed and what it fixes or improves. And 'exceptional change leaders' need to ensure that they dilute change management principles and monitoring techniques at all levels down below until they reach the lower-level employees.

It needs a solid organizational culture that is built on the foundations of 'accepting change.' Not every management executive has a foolproof plan laid out. Even the management has a complete, realistic plan in place, who's to say that the employees will not show resistance to the proposed change? Business executives themselves cannot be the only people who can successfully transform the organization. In some organizations, the management team lives in an illusionary world when they 'assume' that their employees will accept change in a gracious manner. Organizations are a huge melting pot of various personalities and depending on the generation the comprised employees belong to, 'change' is probably the last thing on their minds, regardless of how enthusiastic the management team is. Therefore, you need to gain all marketing skills been taught in the world before committing the change management Journey.

Communication, exemplification, and amplification of best practices are all crucial steps in building a changing-enabling culture.  Make sure all of the management is on board and educated well on the objectives and how to carry them out effectively. Often that works on a micro-level should work on a macro level, you just need to have a strong team of middle managers to delegate to. How you do this will tie into the cultural and philosophical values you project to the organization as a leader. You need to not only sell the policy but also sell values on culture and philosophy. Management needs to allow the community to have a voice for feedback, a much-needed mechanism to refine and fix a policy that is not functioning at an optimal level. During the whole process making sure that all staff is aware of the plan and process, timely updated, and responsible for something. Make yourself accessible all the time in case there are questions from the staff.

Following the scenario with logic steps to manage changes: In order to execute a successful change management process, there is a need to delegate roles and responsibilities of the process, and have an honest communication plan in place. First of all, organizational managers should remind themselves that Change Management is all about balancing the following main elements impacting change: People (the most important one), Strategies, Procedures and IT. And you have to maintain and fix any imbalance in those elements by establishing a committee involving the management in the HR, IT and operations. Secondly, you want to emphasize on the Human Resources role in the change management because people are always considered as the real axle for the organizational movement. Hence, people's resistance could stop all other elements. Change Management part that is played by the HR is the factor number one for any successful organizational & Strategic Change Management. Thirdly, Change Management is a leadership game, and leadership involvement is a must. Lastly, having a Change Management agenda ready, with planned and ensured communication from top to down would highly help in building the new culture.

A systematic Change Management takes logic processes and stepwise scenario. It is about leaders identifying their vision, strategy, and approach, make people feel responsible for the success of the plan, engage them actively and make sure that your new proposal solves their current problems and provides a better working environment. It means change is not for its own sake, but putting people at the center of the change.

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Three Aspects of Digital Balance

The human virtue of adaptation, evolution, and being ‘novel in finding solutions’ will see us through even for many more centuries.

Nature and human societies are a ‘complex adaptive system’ inhabiting interacting agents that adapt to each other and their environment. It is a nonlinear, dynamic, and open system in a thermodynamic sense. Unlike a closed equilibrium system, it hence spontaneously self-organizes; generates patterns, structures, and complexity; and above all, creates novelty over time. Either from nature or business perspectives, how to strike the great balance of such a complex and dynamic system, though?

The balance of micro vs. macro perspective: The problems with micro and macro as a starting point are that it does not implicitly help people differentiate between "thinking about systems" and "thinking in systems." The universe is an intermix of micro and macro entities and every aspect of it is characterized by duality. The human thought process is controlled and limited by internal and external factors. When we do macro-thinking, we invariably leave out micro-thinking and vice-versa. It is possible to think about systems from a micro and macro perspective in a systematic fashion, you cannot observe what you do not know. Recognition cannot function without cognition. The problem is with having the ability to reflect over how you make sense of something - to reflect your process of sensemaking as a way to query the relevance and boundaries of the prejudice you have used in your judgment process. In this way, you can see the trees without missing the forest; understand the big pictures without ignoring the significant details.

The balance of leading and following: The very concept of 'leading' implies that leaders and followers are trying to move somewhere, with the leader making more of a contribution about the direction of that movement. Does this also imply that the direction: the vision is one the follower shares with the leader? With today’s uncertainty and ambiguity, the needs of the individuals' participating and collaborating should somehow take into account, but leaders should have the ability to discern, analyze & synthesize, and make a fair judgment in order to make the right decisions based on the often overloaded information. And followers shouldn’t just ‘blindly’ follow their leaders, they have to practice independent thinking and critical thinking, actively participating and engaging in knowledge sharing, to be the leader in their own knowledge domains, to discover the purpose and master the expertise as well. If there is mutual respect between people, it makes a lot of difference. Most of the time, people are disrespectful because they themselves are not being treated with respect. If their opinions are valued, and if they get dignified responses to their suggestions, they too, will feel good about it. People can be creative and express themselves openly. For that, top management will have to proactively create such a culture of learning and innovation, to strike the balance between leading and following, pushing and pulling, changing, and stability.

The balance between orders (standardization) and ‘chaos’ (innovation): Organizations and their people learn through their interactions with the environment: They act, observe the consequences of their actions, make inferences about those consequences, and draw implications for future action. The process is adaptively rational, it has to strike the balance of ‘keeping the order,’ and sparking the innovation. Requirements and processes of innovation implementation include

-Know yourself thoroughly.

-Find the possible alternatives to be adopted.

-Study the alternatives and select the best possible implementable alternative.

-Formulate the strategy to implement, considering your present strengths and weaknesses.

-Implement with full belief and faith in yourself. This also requires the strategy of do, check, and do. This helps avoid any unforeseen error.

The human virtue of adaptation, evolution, and being ‘novel in finding solutions’ will see us through even for many more centuries. Life itself could be viewed as resulting in emergent means of reorganizing, refocusing, and rebalancing resources. In fact, the need of the time is to “better understand evolution and harness its power to serve human purposes” and design the institutions and societies to be a well-balanced system with the abundance of energy and sustainable advantages.

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How to Help Functional Managers Think in a more Strategic Way?

 Organizations have personalities in the same way that an individual does.

Bandaid or quick fixing are commonplace in management. The ability to operate in this mode to find and implement a quick solution is often rewarded because it is so visible. This quick solution is very focused on the specific problem, so the broader picture and potential impact on other things are not explored. However, such short-term focus mentality will stifle innovation and damage the organization’s long-term strategic execution. As business executives or strategists, how can you help all functional leaders or managers think in a more strategic way? How to run an organization that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces?

Business strategists need to help functional managers understand the benefits of taking a broader view before jumping into action. In many business environments that are due to 'the system' making a virtue of the ability to 'fire-fight,' and be very responsive to very short notice inputs. Because this has been 'the way we do business around here' for so long, it appears that many folks simply don't know what 'good' looks like when it comes to thinking in terms of the longer and broader picture and, even less, how to do it. This sort of mentalities and behaviors not only come from functional managers, even from senior executives. Hence, it’s a hard slog dragging these folks to the water when trying to get them to think strategically. So business strategists have to work through with the senior executive team by trying to build a future state blueprint for their improvement program, to create a target to focus effort and valuable resource. If this can become a habit of replacing the adrenaline rush to fight the fire, it would be more advantageous in the long run. Another approach is to sell the benefits of thinking more broadly before jumping into actions, in terms that will grab their attention (maybe about cost efficiency, increased profit, bigger market share, or just 'making tomorrow better than today').

Organizations have personalities in the same way that an individual does. Most often, an organization's personality replicates the personality of its leader, and that the personalities of the leadership drive the culture of the organization. It can be very disruptive for employees to find themselves under a change of leadership even though their job descriptions have not changed at all. There are different mentality either by nature or through training; some people may mentally be "planners" while others naturally "shoot from the hip." The ones that shoot from the hip tend to leave the plans on the shelf and never use them while planners value the effort and thinking that went into that plan and ensured it is regularly used as a living document. In organizations that tend to "shoot from the hip," there is a lack of strategic and tactical plans for problem-solving or the plan is written on high without employee participation. All too often, plans are written and stuck on a shelf. The result is an absence of guidance in daily problem-solving. The most effective use of a plan of any kind is as a discussion driver. It doesn't even matter if it turns out the plan is all wrong for the company. By having discussions about the plan at all levels of the company, people learn how best to work together to serve the customer. Without that discussion, it may never be recognized that a plan is not workable. Every time an idea comes up, those who have been taught this process, work through the questions. It results in one or more people in the conversation-facilitating both strategic and systems considerations of the idea. The use of open questions is very powerful. For example, exploring how the idea aligns with the organization's vision and key strategies. Then looking at what impact it might have in a few year's time. And exploring what impact the idea is likely to have on other stakeholders - internal and external.

The best way to avoid the leadership gap is to have every employee write a section of the plan that pertains to their particular area of expertise. Building a business concept, developed in the company by top executives. It should be simple, well done, and thought thoroughly while in construction. Everyone should know what it is for. Use it as a filter to evaluate initiatives. Refer to the business concept for guidance. They need to codify who their "suppliers" and "customers" are both inside and outside the company, by writing their personal business plans and communicating that plan to their "suppliers" and "customers," they help to ensure that everyone they do business with on a daily basis understands how to issue resolution affects them.

1) Encouragement: Push and encourage yourself and others to "think in bigger boxes" (think outside of your job description and consider company and industry and even societal impacts).

2). Creativity: Assume that every problem has multiple solutions and ask yourself and others for "three ways we might address this issue." (One may be much better than the others, but push for multiple solutions.)

3). Multidimensional thinking: Take the time to look at every situation from multiple points of view (customer POV, supplier POV, management POV, etc.).

It is important to train your managers and people think more critically, strategically, and systematically. Strategic and Systems Thinking generally, if not always, strive to find a simple solution. Critical thinking is also an important skill to have in this rapidly changing business environment. Recognizing the changing trends and needed corrections to a strategic plan is a huge asset to a company. Business leaders and strategists need to present a profound and clear example of how to gauge an individual's thinking style quickly and effectively. Functional managers have to think “big,” to understand that the business as a whole is more superior to any function, and employees should understand how they create value, and it will motivate many people and make them feel more engaged with their work.

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Leaders vs. Managers

The primary role of leadership is about creating change while the primary objective of management is creating order.

A fundamental purpose of leadership is to provide vision and empower change while a fundamental goal of a manager is to oversee the tasks and execution. Some great managers do lead well, and leaders manage well, but many do not have both skillsets. Some leaders manage badly, and many managers lead badly. What are the most important differences between leaders and managers? And how to cultivate more talents with both skill sets?

Leaders inspire people to think about and reach for what can be. Managers execute to what is. It is rare that any of us are pure leaders or managers, but we have to play both roles based on the team or organization's overall needs. Leaders invite debate and challenges from employees for innovative ideas. Whereas, the managers merely administer and execute the assigned functions with an aim to achieve targeted results. The problem is that if the manager gets stuck in the day to day activities and remain happy with compliance, then there is no room for creativity to do better than expected. If we don't take risks, try new methods and challenge the traditional approach and follow agile leadership, and then the task gets boring and not effective. Great leaders not only have great vision but are realistic towards making it happen, and have a great manager to compliment the execution process. You also need a great manager that understand the vision's prime directive and capable of ensuring a smooth transition during the execution phase towards a successful completion of the vision. Otherwise, it would fail in making it happen. Being a leader can on occasion feel isolating, however, by following your instinct, you will more often than not turn the situation around and produce a positive outcome. A great manager does need to lead "at times" and a great leader does need to manage "at times," however, at the very core, great managers, and great leaders are both critical to every organization and we should respect both leaders and managers

The primary role of leadership is about creating change while the primary objective of management is creating order. Good managers discover and develop leaders in the team. Sometimes the manager will not be the leader of the team but if manage with intelligence can discover the talents and work to retain them and to direct each member's abilities to the best of the company. Leaders are great visionaries. They possess an innate potential to transform vision into reality and become the true source of inspiration and motivation for success. Effective leaders facilitate progress and encourage innovation. Great managers engage people with effective communication and utilize win/win strategies for overcoming obstacles. To be a great leader you need to know how to manage as well.

Management focus    Leadership focus

Task/Things Vision/People

Control Empowerment

Efficiency Effectiveness

Doing things right Doing the right things

Speed Direction

Practices Principles

Command Questioning/Pulling/Communication

Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler. When we try to neatly and distinctly package, characterize, and compartmentalize the traits, skills, competencies, IQs, and EQs of leaders and managers we tend to oversimplify their purpose, role, and function: What is more important: Having a catalog of traits or gauging the impact, the effectiveness and efficiency of leadership and management on followers and organizations? There is an obvious dichotomy between the two extremities of the scale, but most leaders have to learn to be good managers and vice versa. A great leader can define and effectively communicate the vision, and good managers to help make it happen. To inspire one to take action in a common cause is a trait of leadership. To be memorable as the catalyst for concerted efforts to achieve a common goal or achievement is a trait of leadership. If leaders can be developed, there should be different levels of leaders according to their strengths. If there are different levels of strengths, leadership should be able to develop along their strengths and determine their competencies and accountability.

Leaders are the visionaries moving forward for growth, inspiring the masses for a common goal with innovative moves toward the future. Managers are the implementers, taking the visions of the leaders and implementing the actions actually to make the visions become realities. Leaders hold a long-range view. Good leadership is about doing the right things. Managers: 1+1=2, Leaders: 1+1=3. Leaders use influence to motivate and inspire others to follow and support them as they move the organization beyond its comfort zone. Challenging beliefs, ideas, and strategies along with accepted ways of doing things are all hallmarks of leadership. In reality, leaders have to manage, and managers have to lead to a greater or lesser extent. So the goal is to cultivate talents that are fluent in both skillsets, they are not mutually exclusive.

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What are the Best Medium or Channels to Capture Customer Feedback?

 How to capture customer feedback is only one of many mechanisms organizations need to build in order to put customers at the center of how you run a business today.

Most of the organizations are using the feedback forms or NPS forms to take the customer feedback and measure customer experience. Many organizations are incentivizing their customers in the form of lucrative discounts and freebies to fill in the feedback, but is it a right practice? Will the customer give candid feedback in this case? What are the best medium or channels to capture customer feedback which can truly help you improve customer service and overall experience?

The challenge is to use a platform which should enable you to reach out to your customer in an effective manner to get the feedback. You need to avoid over-surveying customers. Sometimes customers have a time constraint on filling in separate surveys, but asking customers questions at each stage of their journey can equally upset them. Collecting surveys from SMS and IVR etc. may just generate scores and not necessarily explain what action you should take on the back of those scores, which drives the need for a qualitative element of feedback. Incentives do not always increase the response rate to a survey. Also, if you deal with business customers offering incentives can run counter to companies accepting inducements to use a particular provider.

The real-time feedback can provide insights that can genuinely help operations teams to drive service over time. Real-time feedback also has the advantage that you can set up satisfaction alerts to go immediately to customer management if a guest enters a response below a certain minimum threshold, an NPS score of 0 to 3, etc. Is there any other medium or channel through which feedback can be taken to improve the customer experience really depends on what is most convenient for your customers at a particular point in the journey. Generally speaking, gaining feedback from customers at the point of experience when customers or guests are most engaged with the business and are most inclined to give useful and accurate feedback. Also, if a customer is surveyed at multiple touch points and no action is taken on negative feedback, you run a risk of getting an even lower response rate as customers sense you are asking for feedback and not doing anything with it.

There are solutions providers that can help you collect feedback through any channel you care to mention. Don't forget also to augment your feedback with qualitative research, an ethnographic approach could work very well in the organization in order to understand your customers' needs and expectations more deeply. Some cloud-based services collect customer or guest feedback and sentiment that compliment NPS with "stories" of why the user feels the way they do and how that supports increases and decreases in scores. Together and in balance you get a more holistic view of the real experience. There are many other things that you can do, automatically link positive open-ended comments to social media, also gathers a list of "VOC" clients. These are clients you meet at events, online discussion group and other avenues who are simply willing to talk to someone about specific product launch ideas, engagement initiatives - or anything for which you want a solid client opinion. It's a slower process to get this level of participation, though. All being said, it takes time, effort and mechanism to get feedbacks which can truly tell you the useful information about customers.

How to capture customer feedback is only one of many mechanisms organizations need to build in order to put customers at the center of how you run a business today. The good customer experience management is the norm, but exceptional customer service and experience offers the 'WOW' concept as the necessary success factor to ensure you stay ahead of the game, particularly with your peers in the business.

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