The Ten Modern Intelligences to Perceive the Leadership Innovation

Leadership innovation should be the BIG IDEA and strategic imperative for the whole world.

In today’s world, the only thing is not changing is change itself, the leadership is no exception. Leadership style in 20th century is more about command and control at the hierarchical structural organization; then internet and globalization make the world more interconnected and interdependent than ever, the organization has increasingly become more complicated in the global scope and complex in the process and structure, it requires leaders with multiple leadership intelligences to handle the unprecedented challenges facing in today’s enterprise, to deliver both the humanity value and shareholder’s value, to leverage short-term profit pursuit with long-term social responsibility.

Today’s management has been educated and equipped with IQ (Rational Intelligence to make the efficient command) & EQ (Emotional Intelligence to play the poker face and control the hierarchy), it’s not qualified enough to face today’s uncertainty, here are ten modern intelligence the leader needs to cultivate to lead organization from Build to Last and Good to Great.

1. Creative Intelligence

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. (Albert Einstein)

Creative leaders naturally reinvent the open leadership, embrace the curiosity, and inspire the innovation with discipline, since curiosity beat IQ in every chance to create the fresh new idea, and innovation imperative is top priority for every company in every industry in today’s dynamic environment: business model needs to be changed every couple of years, and the latest technologies are revitalizing what we do business in radical way, the creative leaders will orchestrate the innovative value chain to catalyze the organization’s change management and sustainable growth.

2.Cultural Intelligence

To lead the people, walk behind them.” Lao Tzu quotes

To lead the people, walk behind them.” Lao Tzu quotes

What is the culture, culture is what has been said, and the thought from the world. Today’s leader should better become the multi-culture evangelist, to appreciate the beauty of diversity, to expand the global vision via the expanded lens of deeper understanding about the cultural edge, to cure the organization with both Western medicine and Eastern acupuncture.

Culture like water, and organization like the ship, the enchanting open culture may push the ship toward the right direction, and the out-of –date culture may not only drag down the ship, even sink it.

The modern leaders with cultural intelligence could not only lead their own organization to the global scope, but also make bigger impact on human society as a whole.

3.Collective intelligence
 “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. -John Fitzgerald Kennedy quotes

Great leaders are good listeners, and the indefatigable learners, ask the right questions, to approach solutions via the collective wisdom. Today’s social networking and enterprise collaboration tools have provided the ideal platform to streamline the brainstorming process, The future of management will always lead the perfect mix of physical team and virtual team, functional team & borderless team, working staff and subject zealots

The leaders with collective intelligence are not just issuing the command base on the status quo, more importantly they need synthesize all sort of solutions with speed, master the talent pool with democratic discipline

4. Intrapersonal Intelligence 

 Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.”
John Maxwell quotes


Intrapersonal Intelligence could be the high level of EQ, the leaders may need self-awareness (know their own strength and weakness well), self-reflection (evoke the magical thinking, visualize the purpose), self-guidance (via learning, experiencing & practicing), plus, self-discipline, self-examination and self-governance.

The leaders with intrapersonal intelligence may become the symbol of growth, following Peter Drucker’s management manifesto, drive the organization to both doing the right thing and dong the thing right.

5. Influential Intelligence
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.  John Quincy Adams

The leaders has the ability to influence peers and superiors as they undertake a broad range of crucial decisions involving the issues as strategy, budgets, branding, pricing, and technologic vision, a mindset could be called influential intelligence.

The executives with influential competence will be more flexible and less rigidly tied to top-down, command-and-control environment, they value the employees, understand the mind-set of all members of group, they do not dominate discussions, instead, they encourage open critical debate, and encourage each team member to contribute positively.

6.Value Judgment Intelligence

 Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.”  Stephen R. Covey

From collective wisdom via online leadership discussion, VQ (Value Judgment Intelligence) is not just an idea, theory or concept. It is something that we scientifically identify and measure and it is a critical factor that increases or limits most other intelligences. In fact, is the fundamental driver of virtually all human choice, actions, reactions. For example, through VQ, we can identify how a person approaches and thinks about risk or how well they can adapt to change

As we discussed above, today’s enterprise may not be enough to deliver shareholder’s value only, to percept the long-term prosperity, more critically, every organization may need dliver the humanity value to advance the global society.

The leaders with value judgment intelligence could blueprint the organization’s purpose and mission more clearly, drive the change needed to build a truly great company.

7. Risk Intelligence 

One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.”   Arnold H. Glasgow quotes


Risk has never been critical topic than it is today, In an age of extraordinary uncertainty and global economy, how to framework the risk intelligent enterprise is the top priority at every organization’s agenda.

The leader with risk intelligence will integrate risk management into enterprise’s core decision-making processes with proactive risk-control scenario, through their options in advance to better prepare and response effectively, this strategy will allow the organization to be both more resilient in dealing with adversity and more agile in pursuing opportunity.

8. Philosophical Intelligence

The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.”   Jim Rohn quotes

The leaders with philosophical intelligence may evoke what we call the paradoxical thinking process, which is defined as a statement that seems contradictory, unbelievable, or absurd but that may actually be true in fact. To put in more logical way, today’s leader may always see the both sides of coin at multi-dimensional angle before making any strategic decisions.

The leaders may not only need be guided via Peter Drucker’s "Management Credo," but also digest Sun Zi’s "The Art of War" strategy as well.

9. Integral Intelligence 

When the solution is simple, God is answering. Albert Einstein


Today’s enterprise has been divided into the divisional silo, today’s leader has also been categorized as left-brain logic thinker or right-brain creative thinker; The 21st century leader should have the integral intelligence, to well integrate the art of leadership with the science of management at seamless way, to practice the management discipline with the innovative approach.

10. Reputable Intelligence

Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish. 
Anne Bradstreet


The culture and value are at the heart of reputational intelligence, the organization can’t consistently do the right things unless everyone knows what those right things are, and that start with the leadership team. The leader with reputational intelligence will bring the true value to help the organization thriving.

In today’s digitized world, how to maintain the quality reputation both at physical societal environment and internet space will be critical, since where visibility of people is greater than ever

The leaders with reputational intelligence will gain the trust, discover the truth, and keep growing themselves and their organization with reputational imperative for the long term.

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Seven Pillars of Wisdom to Enchant Cloud

This March in Bay Area is truly cloudy, full of raining, plus, it kicked off the annual Cloud Connect conference event, to make the cloud enchanting than ever.

I am Cloud evangelist, participated this cloud show four years on the row, this year it's surely reaching the tipping point: about 100 vendors standing on the cloud, and no vacancy to listen to the keynote speech, cloud has been transformed from the buzz word into the essential phenomena, and Cloudification is on the right path leading into the Cloudeconomy.

Unlike the last couple of year’s show, most of players are SAAS model, try to scratch the cloudy skin, this year, cloud become thicker and multi-dimensional, not only you see many IAAS and PAAS players, but also blue elephant players such as IBM and HP, and virtual tiger player like VMware are eager to climb into the cloud.

Cloud becomes the mainstream, besides what we defined cloud as SAAS, IAAS and PAAS, and more specifically, there’re seven pillars of wisdom to enchant the cloud:
1.Security as Cloud Service

2.Data Infrastructure as Cloud Service

3.Storage & Network as Cloud Service

4.Agile Platform as Cloud Service

5.Performance Analytics as Cloud Service

6.Cloud Brokerage as Service

7.Application Software as Service

This year’s theme is hybrid Cloud, most of the vendors would like to define their cloud hybrid. Well, I think the most important thing is not just treat Cloud as the fashion promotion, more essentially, Cloud is becoming the most invisible but powerful framework to deliver the agile enterprise and help us reinvent many legacy industries and organizations.

Cloud as a sustainable innovation, will be embraced by both fresh startup and industry giant, to create the new dynamic solutions from every IT perspective.

Cloud as a disruptive innovation, may get resisted by those conservatives, finally it will help simplify the software licenses hassles, create new business model and deliver the value at real time.

In summary, Cloud will enchant not only the technology, but also the business vision, and nurture the next generation of leadership, it could become one of the enchantments to win back growth from the recession.

Last but not least, there’re two improvements could be made in this phenomenal show:
1)The show has been hosted on 3/8, the international women holiday, however, there’s no female keynote speaker invited to make a splash.

2)Surely more BI Cloud vendors could be invited to the show to make the Cloud more “brainer”.

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Celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day: 7 Essentials to Future of Leadership

It takes a decade to grow a tree, it takes a century to cultivate the talent Chinese Proverb

  Google inspire the “Women on the Bridge” event to celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day on 3/8, and Forbes has published a series of articles to initiate the discussion on reinventing the management, the most encouraging one is: Women: is not about diversity, it’s the future.
http://blogs.forbes.com/stevedenning/2011/03/02/women-its-not-diversity-its-the-future/
And the other insightful one:
http://blogs.forbes.com/jennagoudreau/2011/03/08/on-international-womens-day-good-bad-and-really-bad-news/

What can we learn from the articles, many other resources, and most importantly the historic women movement in the whole century?
1Authentic Leadership
The economic tsunami make s all of us to rethink the root cause of leadership failure. The answer is: we may need more authentic leadership.
What is authentic leadership?
It’s all about 5”I”s: Insight, Initiative, Influence, Impact and Integrity.

Since female only take 2.2% of chief executive position in major US company, the male dominated leadership culture may lack of this 5 in some way.

The other “I” we may ask is “Incentive”: When men reach the power, usually they may gain the world (worldly prosperity); But when female climb the ladder, they make a lot of sacrifice, incentive matters.

Still, leaders from both gender should think BIGGER than themselves.


2.Leading by Influencing
In 20th century, agricultural and even early industrial society, stereotypical command & control supermen leadership make sense; in 21st century, human society has been transformed into internet, social computing era, the authentic leadership will be more focusing on the cultural influencing. : When women are 60% of talent and 90% of customers, they are BIGGER influencers in many perspective.

3.Better Communicator
Social media and enterprise 2.0 technology make the world open battle ground and small global village, women are natural better communicators and evangelist for promoting the collective intelligence and democratic disciplines.

4.Practitioner for Humanity and Humility
Humanity and humility is part of mother nature: it’s the strength with modesty, self-confidence without arrogance.

5.Continue to Make Academic Progress
Great to know in 2010, more women than men in the United States received doctoral degrees, Women have long outnumbered men in earning master’s degrees, especially in education. Women earned nearly six in 10 graduate degrees in 2008-09.

The authentic leadership may also expand into :Intelligence Leadership.

6.Colorful Vision
It may be shallow to “Judge the Book by its Cover”, however, from the cover, we may predict some rhetoric of the book.

Female attire could have all spectrum of color theme, to reflect the beauty of nature; Usually men’s suit are either black or grey; Does that indicate female leadership may have warmer, more natural colorful vision, and sometimes men may have somewhat heavy preference or more “black & White” with gray area mindset?

Though the true visionary leaders are from both genders, it’s about authentication, delegation, global thought leadership and cultural intelligence

7.Social Responsibility
The other article today lists top 100 corporate citizens today: http://www.forbes.com/2011/03/07/best-corporate-citizens-leadership-managing-100.html
Well, I am not sure, how many senior female leaders on board in those companies, definitely via mother nature, female leadership will inspire the new wave of CSR campaign.

Today, the Cloud Connect conference has kicked off, the number of audience and vendors maybe tripled compared to last year’s, more men and women stand on the Cloud now, however, I think the meeting facilitator should at least invite one female cloud leader to make a splash in this holiday.

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The Future Roles of Watson

Last week’s big news: IBM’s smartest computer Watson won the game and became the new Jeopardy champion, it’s not only just a new milestone in computer history but also a victory for humanity. Watson will play a significant role in helping humans change the world, and IBM could also commercialize Watson and get a decent return from the investment in him in the last couple of years.

During the game, even though Watson has no “face” yet, we could still visualize Watson as an intelligent, information-savvy, one of the coolest players with the fastest running mindset, beyond the human-powered machine of listening, learning, engaging, and evolving. Besides being informative, intelligent, and inquisitive, Watson could become more intuitive, inspiring, and imaginative via indefatigable practice.

Watson will be qualified for many roles in the future:
•Watson will become the doctor or doctor assistant to interact with patients and human colleagues, diagnose and prescribe with precision and speed;

•Watson will become a senior consultant in any knowledge-intensive domain, such as legal, IT, science research, customer services., etc, bring up new insight via comparing, patterning, and tuning volume information with super speed.

•Watson will become the future of librarians, and professors; communicate with the audience via unimaginable knowledge and wisdom.

•Watson will become the writer to convey fresh insight or perspective through digesting so much historical information, no matter whether it’s a research white paper or a fiction story, Watson could predict the future by seeing through history.
….
In summary, Watson’s victory helped to open a new chapter to the next generation of computers, artificial intelligence, and smart robots, many Watsons or Watsonas will work closely with humans to reinvent science, management, and philosophy. etc. and explore the many unsolved mysteries around us. Watson helps us celebrate humanity, recognize our own potential, and well prepare for the future by digging deeper into the historical pattern.

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Revisit legacy, Hardness the Imagination

The three things that are most essential to achievement are common sense, hard work and stick-to-it-iv-ness.....

Today is 164th birthday of the Mr. Thomas Edison, America’s most brilliant inventor, he got 1368 patterns in his lifetime: from light bulb to phonographic, from phone to mobile picture, his inventions has fortified the solid foundation of modern industrial society, and he co-founded company General Electric more than 130 years ago, today, GE is still one of the most innovative companies in the world, with broader footprint of modern technologies.

Edison is not only the scientist, the inventor, the savvy businessman, he is also the true thought leader full of unimaginable wisdom, here are some quotes from him:


•The three things that are most essential to achievement are common sense, hard work and stick-to-it-iv-ness.....

•Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do in the first place doesn't mean it's useless....
•The thing I lose patience with the most is the clock. Its hands move too fast.

•Time is really the only capital that any human being has and the thing that he can least afford to waste or lose...

•Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man's character.

•The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human body, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.

•Someday, man will harness the rise and fall of the tides, imprison the power of the sun, and release atomic power.

•"Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. Accordingly, a 'genius' is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework."

And the one below is a true inspiration in this post-recession era:
“Be courageous! Whatever setbacks America has encountered, it has always emerged as a stronger and more prosperous nation.... Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith and go forward!” Edison

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The New Year, New Phenomena to Celebrate the Year of Golden Rabbit

The rabbit is the lucky sign to symbolize the peace, agility,

Hopefully 2011 is the turning point for us to see the light via the recession tunnel we’ve just been through in the last couple of years, it’s more about the inspiring times than the interesting times. There’re quite a few new phenomenal events happened at the first month of the 2011:


Community Event: The consulting company Trianz hosted the career open house in Tech Mart Santa Clara, CA last week, it’s truly a great effort and initiative to rekindle our passion about the opportunity in this tech land, it’s been quite a couple of years since we saw any career fair in convention center, well, more than a decade ago, the same place is just like talent supermarket, full of dynamic and hope.

National event: President Obama outlined the “how to win the future” union address speech, also make the job creation as his number #1 priority to accelerate the economic growth out of the recession.

Global event: Davos 2011 World Economic forum brings worldwide business leaders and professors to discuss the global risks, competitiveness, digital ecosystem convergence cross-industry domain, and the optimistic perspective on the 2011 global agenda.

Today, Feb. 3 also celebrate the Chinese lunar new year spring festival, and start the Year of Golden Rabbit, what we can learn from the rabbit:

1.The rabbit is the lucky sign to symbolize the peace, agility, and patience, the opposite of the tiger, wish the rabbit brings a year in which we can catch our breath and calm our nerves. From global perspective, we should more understand and respect the world disparity, and share the social responsibility between the developed and emerging economies.

2.The rabbit is the symbol of the Moon, The Moon is YIN, signifying magic, the diversified leadership; the bright white moonlight instill us with fearlessness, love and courage, to not only strengthen our inner "Chi" energy, but also bring wisdom into our life.

3.The times rabbits are most often seen is during early dawn hours or at evening dusk. These are times when the visible becomes invisible and the invisible becomes visible. In this post-recession era with unusual uncertainty, we may always catch the insight, study the patterns, both keep optimistic and be cautious.

May the year of rabbit becomes the infection point to accelerate the economy growth, reenergize ourselves with hope, nurture the next generation of leadership, also may golden rabbit brings us the peace, love, and prosperity.

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“Thought Leadership” is theTheme in the new Decade

If we can not end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
-J.F. Kennedy.

You could learn something every day from Google’s daily logo, today is President John. F Kennedy Inaugural Address Day 50-year anniversary, three days ago, we just celebrated Dr. Martin. Luther King Jr.’s birthday, the two political leaders living in the same era had a significant influence on improving human society.

Dr. King's “I Have a Dream” speech advocated basic civic rights and built the foundation of democracy and the American dream, and President J.F. Kennedy’s inaugural address and “Go To Moon” speech lifted the American dream to explore space and beyond. These two great thought leaders set a bright tone for us to follow.

A half-century later, in this new decade of the 21st century, we need to weave and enhance human dreams into the new reality. Thought leadership is the true color of any authentic leader in any domain, at every corner of the world at any time.

What is exactly the thought leadership in this turning point:

 
1. Thought leaders should be the authentic leader who always has a unique point of view.


2. Thought leaders should make the voice for as many diversified groups as possible.


3. Thought leaders should lead by influencing than status quo.


4. Thought leaders inspire the vision via the power of mind and blueprint of character.


5. Thought leaders convey the dreams, innovations and future of life via dreaming big.


6. Thought leaders make progressive improvements via continued life learning.


7. Global thought leaders make global influence via cultural intelligence, linguistic articulation, and diversified points of view.

….
We need men who can dream of things that never were and not ask why.
John. F. Kennedy.

Like Dr. King’s dream, President Kennedy’s “Go to Moon” journey is not the final destination yet, the other thought leader Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group is transforming this “dream project” into the commercial space transportation business, that may open the brand new chapter for the space exploration and the evoke the new inspiration for the future of airline.

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Martin Luther Day’s 7 “Point of View”: How to Revitalize American Dream

From every mountainside, let freedom ring! And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. Martin luther King Jr.

Today is Martin Luther Day holiday, when listening to the rhetoric speech “I have a dream” made by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about half century ago, you could still feel so strongly about his passion, his piece of anger, his poetic style and his deep love about this land.

In the last couple of decade, America made significant progress in civic rights, it’s a dream come true for boys and girls, no matter you are black, white, yellow or brown., etc, who sit and learn at the same classroom; diversified people worked in the same workplace, and the last decade, maybe it’s the lost decade from economic perspective, but United State has elected the first African American President, it’s a great symbolic milestone to fulfill Dr. King’s dream.

However, in today’s global environment, the world becomes more sophisticate and uncertain than ever, how to expand Dr. King’s dream into the global space and explore the cultural intelligence to make a peace in the world?, how to dig Dr. King’s dream deeper into the next level, unite the best of talent and develop the diversified leadership to accelerate the growth from Great Recession?

Here are seven thought-provoking points of view in this special day.


1. Stall Point: The Great Recession
In the first decade of 21st century, we’ve been through the internet bubble and bust, the war and Great Recession, also experienced both the “irrational exuberance” and “unusually uncertainty”. It’s a lost decade for many white-class families, small to large enterprises, the legendary industries (such as airline, auto and bank) and United States as the most powerful nation in the world. It’s a stall point of America Dream, how did it happen, what can we learn from it and are there any opportunities to revive American Dream?


2. Focal Point: The New United Way
“ A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist see the opportunity in every difficulty” Winston Churchill

If you walk through Border’s book shelf, you could find all kinds of books to learn the great ways to do the businesses: from the IBM way: “Who Said the Elephant Can’t Dance” written by former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner (Keep growing bigger but stay agile), or the Intel Way : “Only Paranoid Survive” by formal Intel CEO Andrew S. Grove ( how to exploit the crisis point that challenging every company), plus many other “Good to Great” way: such as:, “The Southwest Way” ( the customer centric service), The Toyota Way (4Ps model-Philosophy, Processes, People and Partners), “The HP Way” ( the garage root and culture), “The Mckinsey Way” (MECE decision tree), and the “The Disney Way” (the destination is to make the customers, the employees, the partners happy). Am I missing some other best way?

In the new decade of 21st century, we need integrate them into the New United Way: growth, governance, customer-centric, sustainability, humanity & humility, analytics and happiness”., etc.

It’s a focal point for Americans to stay focus and lead growth out of recession.


3. Touch Point: The Great Attitude
“We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there
are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.” Martin Luther King

In the first decade of 21st century, the world transformed from US-centric into the multi-polar; the economic engine has switched from Western developed countries into Eastern developing countries.

But in many perspectives, America is still a great country on the hill: the democratic system, the innovative technologies, the best universities and the most diversified people in the world.

There’re many reasons to be confident, not arrogance; be positive than negative; toward learning attitude instead of judging

The touch point should be: following Dr. King’s attitude and dream, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, we should work together to rebuild the material and spiritual prosperity base on the foundation of the freedom, liberty and pursuit of the happiness.

4.Infection Point: The Fresh Leadership
"When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity."
~ John F. Kennedy

Great Recession was cause by the leadership failure, since 20th century’s superman or superwoman stereotyped leadership focus on “command and control”, to maintain the organizational hierarchy; it maybe out of fashion to adapt to the new phenomenal such as globility and collective wisdom, to build up the modern learning organization.

The infection point of the new generation of leaders: they must have the global footprint, worldwide vision and strategy, the differential voice for those without voice, and deliver the value and result beyond the quick ROI.


5. Tipping Point: The Culture Intelligence
The deep insight about Dr. King’s American dream is also about “Understanding and accepting diversity enable us to see what each of us is needed”

It takes a decade to craft and master a foreign language and culture. Culture intelligence is a strategic essential for any forward-looking companies, since multi-cultural perspectives are more like wider-angle lens to see through the future than a crystal ball.

The tipping point of Culture intelligence is: the more you learn, the more you get from the collective wisdom, the better value you could create for your organization, the more positive impact you could bring to the human society, to reach the next level of Dr. King’s dream.


5.Inflection Point: The Technology & Information
“An individual without information cannot take responsibility; an individual who is given information cannot help but take responsibility.” Tom Peter

In the last decade, the globalization, the entrepreneurship and the internet & social technology has reached their peak, and bring up the significant influence on human’s life and global society.

The latest technology such as enterprise 2.0, social network, cloud computing, advance analytics, the green tech are the true differentiator to keep the organization at the competitive edge: how to build up the next generation of organization: such as borderless learning company, how to nurture up the next generation of thought leadership by social computing such as blogs, linkedin, facebook, twitter., how to create new business model and extensive enterprise by cloud computing, and how to improve the environmental sustainability by developing green tech.

The inflection point is to converge the cutting-edge technology with the global business insight and landscape, to deliver the next generation of leadership, to design the learning organization framework, and to reach both individual and company’s potential.


7. Starting Point: The Education
“The justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream”
“ The man will be judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin..”
--Martin Luther King Jr.

The best education not only convey and spread the knowledge, more importantly, it will build up the content of character, instill the value of justice, and train the solid self-discipline and self-motivation, and the teachers are the soul engineers.

America has many high quality universities, but K-12 education has lagged behind from many other countries. Especially the STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineer and Mathematics), What are the reasons behind the scenes?

•Is it like the failed leadership, 20th century’s education system is more about US centric, keep the students self-satisfaction than self-motivation?
•Is it because those college dropout technology titans may inspire the innovation and unconventional success, but also cause the side-effect such as 30% high school dropout rate?
•Is it lack of influential role model to inspire more girls to pursuing the technology major and more?

Education is the starting point of revitalizing the America dream, the student, the teachers, the parents and the whole society should work together to inspire the next generation of education, via learning from overseas, enhancing the curriculum, with the latest technology, and the most important thing: to nurture the education-focused culture, value and mindset.

The news about Mr. Steve Job’s medical leave became the top headline in almost all the media channel today, Steve’s “Sell the dream” and “dream bigger” inspire the world with the innovation.

The two men with big dreams, both Dr. King and Steve’s dreams help advance the human society with the different perspective.

May 2011 become the turning point to lift Dr. King’s dream into the new level: to inspire the diversified leadership, to create enough career opportunities for all hard-working American citizens and reach human’s potential.

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THE FUTURISTIC CIO

If today’s CIO is more like the IT manager to deliver the technology efficiency, then tomorrow’s CIO should more like the visionary business leaders to explore the effectiveness, situation-driven with entrepreneurial mindset.

CHIEF INFLUENCE OFFICER
How to make positive influence and global impact via taking advantage of modern technology such as web 2.0, social network and enterprise 2.0: such as advocating multi-cultural understanding, pursuing growth in emerging marketing, building up the boundaryless enterprise and learning organization

CHIEF INSPIRING OFFICER
How to inspire the employee’s passion and motivation via converging the personal computing and enterprise technology, how to inspire the diversified leadership, how to inspire the younger generation, young boys and girls, especially young girls pursuing technologic career via crafting the fashion of IT, rather than the image of IT manager stereotyped as tech nerd, running the back office maintenance.


CHIEF INNOVATION OFFICER
IF CMO is right-brain intuitive executive role, and CTO and CFO are the left-brain analytic guru, then CIO should be the perfect whole-brain leader: to combine business savvy with technology efficiency, both as IT visionary and the innovative enterprise architect, to see organization as a whole for improving everyday.

So the futuristic CIO may come from different background with all kinds of innovative roles before: entrepreneur, professor, consultant., and even fiction story author, etc., if only you could make a difference through influencing, inspiring and innovating, But sort of technology root is truly the wind under your wing.

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Seven Strategic Dual Roles of Tomorrow’s Recruiters

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

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


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

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

1.The Visionary & the Change Agent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6.The Philosopher & Philanthropist

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

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

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

7.Enterprise Surgeon & Pharmacist


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

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

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

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Entrepreneur CIO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Brainstorm the Process Revolution: The Art or The Science?

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

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

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

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

How to REFINE the art of next generation of BPM:

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

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

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

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

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

2.Rekindle the Business Innovation via Cloud & Social Computing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The future of BPM will enable MashUp, crowdsourcing abilities :

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

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


4.Revitalize the GRC Enforcement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Future of Enterprise: Seven Excitement from Enterprise 2.0

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


Here are 7 Es to evoke further exploration :

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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Refine the Future of Female Leadership

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

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

1. Be a Transformational leader than a micro-manager

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

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

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

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

2. Be a natural magnet than a perfect superwoman

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

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

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

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

Our Value are Reflected in Everything we say or Do.

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

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

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

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