2012 - The Year of the Dragon, and AAPCIMAR?

Monday of this week we recognized the celebration of the Chinese Year of the Dragon. Many people are looking forward to what this year will bring, as the dragon is such a powerful symbol in Chinese astrology. Did you know that it’s the only animal in the Chinese zodiac year that is not real? It’s quite special and very much revered and is believed to get its power from being made up of parts of different animals such as a tiger, a fish, a snake and an eagle. Rather than threatening, the Chinese dragon is a symbol of power, superiority, wisdom and rule.

As most business community leaders and workers are looking for some signs of good news and confidence about the future – perhaps this is what we’ve been waiting for. The Economist posted the following interesting data on Monday:

This Chinese new year could bring good fortune to stock market investors.

Chinese people across the world ushered in their new year on January 23rd, which according to 3,000 year-old Chinese astrology is the year of the dragon. …Physignathus cocincinus, to give its Latin name, is associated with power, authority and good fortune.

For those looking for good news among the grim January headlines, this could bode well for stock market fortunes over the coming year. Between 1900 and 2011, the nine previous dragon years have seen America's Dow Jones Industrial Average price index increase by an average of 7.7% in real terms, the second-best historical record of the 12 zodiac animals. Such fortune may be short-lived however; next year's animal, the snake, has the second-worst historical record.

As organizations take steps to get their hands around what changes to implement in order to take advantage of an economic turnaround, whether brought on by the Year of the Dragon or something else, I thought it might be helpful to post a few tips for managing change successfully. Organized and planned change initiatives help leaders navigate the abundance of land mines strategically planted along the journey ready to blast and derail advancements towards change objects.

• Be clear about where the organization is headed. This vision should be easy to articulate, understand and remember. It should be one that engages and excites stakeholders.
• Fully understand the current and future environments. Recognize the benefit of working with an unbiased third-party to assess the AS IS and TO BE states to help identify gaps and the strategies necessary for closing them. It’s dangerous to build a change plan strictly based on assumptions of internal leadership; get confirmation first, then do your planning.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate. Be open about your interest in gathering opinions and making the changes required for the organization to continue to be competitive and survive. Help employees and other stakeholders understand how your plans will benefit them. Provide schedules, even if tentative, on how the change initiatives are expected to move forward. Provide multiple channels for communicating about change in all directions within and outside of the organization. Train leaders and managers as Change Leaders and strengthen their communication and presentation skills so they can properly address questions even when a clear answer still hasn’t been determined
• Provide leaders of change with executive coaches to assist them with their own personal transitions while they lead others.
• Construct a plan that provides opportunities for as much stakeholder involvement as possible. Understand how various stakeholder groups would like to be engaged and design those possibilities into the plan.
• Be mindful that change doesn’t happen quickly, and be prepared with patience and realistic time lines.
• Celebrate successes, as well as lessons learned from actions that didn’t hit the mark. Empower stakeholders to assist with the change strategies and acknowledge their journeys. Lots of great organizational stories will be available along this journey – don’t keep them to yourself.

So What’s Next?

I think what’s next is AAPCIMAR!   Never heard of it?   Read on.

We all know, unless you’ve been working under a rock, that to be successful in this "new, normal," "21st century," "whatever-you-want-to-call-it" economy we can’t approach business the way we did in the past. It doesn’t really matter what business function you’re responsible for – i.e., accounting, human resources, information technology, engineering and research, operations, etc. - expectations are that workflow and the people working within each system will be efficient, effective and produce results that support the value proposition the organization has with its stakeholders. Achieving that success requires: Assessing, Analyzing, Planning, Change Initiatives, Monitoring, Adjusting and Repeating…AAPCIMAR.

AAPCIMAR requires consistent attention to the external and internal environments in which an organization functions. It also involves a strategy for integrating changes into the organization’s strategic plans. More than ever, I believe our personal and organizational abilities will be tested for flexibility and agility. In the instantaneous world we now work in, leaders and employees will be evaluated differently. For example, we all need to be comfortable making decisions faster while working with changing boundaries: global rather than regional, and home-based rather than cubicle. Our expectations that colleagues will be down the hall and approach work "like us" has been transformed into virtual and global settings with peoples of all types of experiences, backgrounds, educations, nationalities and dreams. Skill sets and experiences associated with managing change will be mandatory; certainly for executive leaders, but also for those in management and supervisory positions. The more we can expand managing change techniques and awareness in the workforce, the faster our organizations will be able to respond.

It’s a different world and a different year. The year of the wise and powerful Dragon is here. What’s your next move?

I welcome your comments to my posting. Please click below. If you found this article to be interesting and helpful I’m very happy for you to pass it along to others. Have a great week.

This article was written for you by Deborah A. King, SPHR, CEO and Sr. Organizational Effectiveness Consultant with Evolution Management, Inc. Debbie and her team can help your organization navigate the challenging journey of individual, team and organizational change.   Contact us for more information: www.evolutionmgt.com or 770.587.9032.

Sunni Brown

Developing Creative Teams - The Art of Working with Others

This ASTER image uses short wavelength
infrared bands to highlight in bright pink
the altered rocks in the Morenci pit associated
with copper mineralization.
NASA/GSFC/ERSDAC/JAROS and
U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

The importance of team work and the ability to collaborate with others continue to be strong competencies successful organizations need to nurture.  With that as a background, I’m republishing this article which I wrote last year.  It is still very relevant and hopefully will spark some ideas for you about how to foster these capabilities within your own style, as well as in the work behaviors of those who report to you.　

Enjoy and Happy New Year!

When a team works well together it’s like viewing an inspiring piece of art. Unfortunately most business leaders report that rather than a creative team working in sync to innovate solutions, they are more likely to experience a lack of agility, creativity, communications, empathy and commitment. What are we missing in preparing employees for the real-life challenges of the 21st century?

IBM’s research last year, conducted with 700 Chief Human Resource Officers (CHRO) from around the world, Working Beyond Borders provides some insights to the disconnects we’re experiencing between our leadership talents and the needs of the changing workplace. Based on their findings, how we train our leaders hasn’t kept up with changing global business circumstances. They suggest a more strategic and integrated business approach needs to be developed and implemented to close the gaps between where our businesses are with leadership development and the future needs of a global marketplace.

Organization development efforts need to focus on addressing an integrated plan to re-tool and educate employees, providing:

• new leadership skills and experiences, acquired and applied at a faster pace
• a restated business protocol that embraces needed workplace flexibilities to connect people to information and each other
• an updated business culture that encourages and rewards creativity and innovation vs. demonstrated performance that follows a "play it safe" status quo mentality

So how do we get there?

Strategic Challenges to Overcome
The analysis of the data collected from the CHRO’s boils down to three key strategies organizations should embrace in order to be prepared to grow and thrive along with the business trends moving us to the future:

• Organizations need to get a handle on the talents and skills they currently have and compare those to a reasonable estimate of the workforce knowledge, skills and abilities they will need in the future. (If you missed my blog last week on Preparing Workers for the Future, you may want to reference it.  Preparing this will help to clearly define how various workforce needs will be staffed, i.e., full-time, part-time, outsourced, etc. This assessment will also help identify high-potential individuals ready and capable of succeeding in a robust leadership development program.
• As the world spins faster and faster it is imperative that organizations improve the intensity and speed at which employees can develop and apply new skills in a creative manner without fearing consequences connected to failure. This paradigm shift provides an opportunity for organizations to think outside-the-box when it comes to training methods integrating dynamic on-the-job project approaches such as: job rotations, mentoring relationships, creative problem solving assignments, and job shadowing opportunities. EMI has found that programs built from a competency-based training model are much more targeted and lead to a broader integration of job responsibilities. Reward programs that motivate and acknowledge creative solutions to problems further demonstrate a culture change commitment to innovation.
• Study after study continues to point to the need to build collaboration skills within our current and future leaders. The ability of individuals to work well with diverse groups, either face-to-face or through the technology advancements that connect us, is essential. Individuals with low Emotional Intelligence (EI) and underdeveloped capabilities to empathize and communicate with others while managing their own preferences will have a role; it just won’t be as a leader. 

These challenges, deemed highly important by the CHRO’s, were also seen as ones that currently are beyond the capabilities of their firms to achieve. This acknowledgement provides a great opportunity for HR to collaborate with other C-suite leaders, as well as the business, academic, and consulting communities, to create practical solutions. Together, we can dialogue and work across silos to energize solutions that are creative and forward-thinking.

So What’s Next?
We’ve all heard the Confucius saying, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." That seems appropriate here. It can be overwhelming to think about the many changes involved with addressing the issues IBM’s research documented. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that the first step -- acknowledging the need for a strategy that integrates solutions into an updated corporate culture and operational practices -- can be managed by breaking it down into workable pieces. Utilizing the skills of external expertise can allow the internal HR leader to actively participate in the collaboration and introduce an "unbiased" perspective to oversee the flow of the project.

Each section of the Insights from Global Chief Human Resource Officers Study ends with recommended questions to motivate thinking and planning. Here are a few to contemplate:

Matching resources to organizational needs:

• Which alternative work structures provide greater opportunity for efficient and more flexible deployment?
• How do you break down the organizational silos that prevent the best use of your talent?
• How can you reduce time to competence in your most critical jobs?

Cultivating creative leaders:

• How are you fostering creativity and borderless thinking among your leadership team?
• Are you radically rethinking leadership development to rapidly close the effectiveness gap?
• Do you integrate leadership development with emerging business opportunities to better prepare leaders for the future?

Fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing:

• What will you do to get multiple generations of employees to actively engage in online collaboration?
• In what ways can you explore, reward and integrate diverse and unconventional points of view?
• What novel techniques are you using to tap into the insights and ideas of employees around the world?

This is an important conversation for organizations to be having. I invite you to use this forum to share what your organization is doing to address these issues. Do you even see these as issues? How does creativity and workforce planning fit into your strategies going forward – or are you focused on something else?

Please click below and offer your comments. Also, if you found this blog sparked your creativity and interest to explore answers, please forward it to engage others who can partner with you. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Leadership Lessons