We are Our Strong Suits

Active Listening No. 7

We all wear a suit over us. This is how people sees and knows us as individuals. With more interactions with others, the early stages of our suits are further refined and customised to make them more fitting and wearable, and they project, internally and externally, who we are for the rest of our lives.

We do not really know when the suit is first created, but we know how we create and keep it in existence, always influencing the perception of others about us. Success is the creator of strong suits. When the suits we wear bring about excitement in others about us and joy in us, they are said to be good suits. With further such meaning making reinforcements, the design becomes great and it stays on us for the rest of our lives.

This is all good and fine until it is a struggle to stay in the suit. Many of us do not know that the suit has become so tight that it is suffocating us. Some knows that it is killing them but it has become so strong that they can no longer take it off. Others choose not to go without it because they are proud about being unique individuals and having it on helps others to single them out from the crowd easily. In this terminal stage, our suit dictates our ways and we become its slaves.

In choosing and perfecting the suit, and wearing only this one, we ignore all other possible suits that could bring other possibilities into our lives. So fixed we are by the suit that we wear, we have no room for fresh ideas. The strong suit becomes exclusive, and it is restricting all of our potentials and limiting what we could possibly do in our lives.

This article was 1st written on 29 Oct 2010.
Copyright 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Coaching 4 Innovation Performance Programme

These are the highlights in this 2-day programme:


Coaching for Innovation Performance

Organisations may use a number of interventions to improve the performance of individuals. These may include teaching, training, facilitation, mentoring, and counselling. Coaching is one of such interventions but its principles, approaches and techniques are distinctively more self-directed. People are meaning making machines and tend to be derailed in their performance, In this module, participants will uncover the key elements of coaching to differentiate it from the more traditional forms of performance interventions. The importance of coaching for innovation is also shared here.


Neurology of Coaching for Innovation Performance

The principles, approaches and techniques of coaching for innovation performance are built around the workings of the brain; how it is attracted to ideas and how it creates insights and learning. In this module, participants learn how the brain makes sense of its surrounding and uses these inputs for insight and knowledge creation. Participants will also learn about the drivers (‘SCARF’ Model) behind this creation process.

Coaching for Innovation Performance Principles

There are 6 key principles in coaching for innovation performance. These principles guide the innovation coach towards creating a self-directed awareness and power for action into one’s own innovation performance. In this segment of the programme, participants will learn about these 6 principles. A series of exercises and activities will be introduced to help the participants gain a greater competency over these principles.

Language of Coaching for Innovation Performance

Like any other interventions used for improving innovation performance, coaching comes with its own unique of lingo and jargons. In this module, participants will learn the art of making coaching self-directed and empowering. They will learn about the levels (‘Choosing Your Focus’ Model) of the coaching conversation, language of coaching, and the importance of clarity of distance, listening for potential and speaking with intent.


Processes of Coaching for Innovation Performance

Coaching is a structured process and this process provides the coach the framework to guide his innovators and innovation teams from awareness to reflection and from this to insights and actions (‘Four Faces of Insight’ Model). In this final segment of the programme, participants will learn three simple processes that help their coachee or coaching teams mine for their goals and actions, generate dialogues for insights and learning, and create conversations for innovative breakthroughs.

This article was written by Anthony Mok on 14 Oct 2010.
Copyright 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Focus on the True Purpose of Celebrating Success and Contribution

Critical Factor of Innovative Organisations No. 9

To see an idea transforms into an innovation, the innovator has to embark on a long and difficult personal journey. The trip will take him to many sceptics and naysayers who wish that he fails. It is also physically and psychologically demanding as he has to put in long hours and make sacrifices to brave the numerous risks and setbacks along the way, which at times causes him to wonder if it is all worth it.

Innovation is never an easy endeavour.

Organisations cannot ignore the ‘hardships’ of these innovators. The management needs to express its gratitude by appreciating them for passionately taking up this role of moving their organisations forward. Without the recognition, the efforts and contributions made by these individuals in their journey of innovation is a meaningless and unmemorable experience.

However, the celebration of an individual’s contribution to and success in innovation has often been ruined by formalities.

We tend to be stuck with the notion of limitations and fairness. Constrained by what is available for distribution in recognising efforts, we have forgotten about the true purpose of why it is there in the first place.

In the name of fairness, we have transformed innovation into a transaction. We have created hierarchies of rewards and imposed systems for fair dispensation of recognition and rewards. In the world of ‘what gets measured gets done’, people are compelled to do silly things to win prizes rather than looking passionately at implementing and delivering the value of the innovation itself. In doing the wrong things, we cultivated the best window dressers rather than recognising and rewarding innovators who have contributed and are successful in moving the organisation forward.

Innovative organisations recognise this flaw and aggressively position innovation as a relational enterprise.

In addition, celebrating an individual’s contribution in innovation cannot be mixed up with conducting a public relations or corporate communication event to signal and gesture a positional intent to the marketplace.

This is what I mean:

Inauthentic Recognition

Showcasing the innovations of the organisation, with the intent of signalling and gesturing a particular competitive position in the marketplace.

Here, the innovation is in the foreground and the innovator is in the background.

The objective is to make your competitors aware of the competitive gains you have made in the marketplace because of the innovations.

Authentic Recognition

Appreciating and celebrating the individual’s contribution and success that has moved the organisation forward.

Here, the innovator is in the foreground and the innovation is at the background.

The objective is to make one feels that he has contributed to the success of the organisation because of his efforts applied to the innovation.

We cannot mix these objectives in the name of cost efficiency, and send the wrong messages to the innovators.

Innovative organisations know that innovators are intelligent enough to detect the authenticity of their management when it is putting innovation ahead of the innovators in these celebrations. These managements know that innovators will stop contributing to the success of the organisation when the innovators know they are being made used of.

Here are the other critical success factors of Innovative Organisations:

• No 1. Purpose Driven Organisation

• No 2. Understanding the Demonic Nature of Vision

• No 3. Risks of Playing No Games & Being Off the Board

• No 4. Fearless Organisation Environment

• No 5. Openness is in the Eradication of Fantasies

• No 6. System of Authentic Sharing

• No 7. Human Resource Investment Is Not About Spending But Creating Opportunities for Learning

• No 8. Stun-gunning Your Organisation into Inventiveness

• No 10. Fully Appreciating the True Meaning of an Innovative Team

This article was 1st written on 14 Aug 2010.
Copyright 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Realities of Cause and Effect

Active Listening Series No. 6

In the Collins English Dictionary, ‘cause’ is defined as ‘something that produces a particular effect’ and ‘effect’ is described as ‘a change or a state of affairs caused by something or someone’. These definitions are interesting because the meaning of each word is found in the description of the other. This shows how tightly intertwined ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ is. They are like the front and the back of the same piece of block.

All effects and their resultant impact begin from a cause. In this sequence of events, the ‘cause creates an effect, which becomes the cause that generates its subsequent effects’. We can see this movement because we can see the back of one block and the front of the adjacent block.

However, with time and space, the line that separates cause and effect blurs, and they become embodied as a single entity. So, the sequence described in the last paragraph is no longer true. Now, it becomes the ‘cause leading to another cause, which creates even more causes’. It is as if we have become myopic and can see only the fronts of all adjacent blocks. Their backs are hidden from us. There are no more effects in this cycle.

Why is this so?

You see, in life, we do not see things as clearly as ‘causes’ and ‘effects’. Instead, we tend to see them as ‘becauses’ and ‘impacts’. We tend to do ‘becauses’ more than doing ‘effects’. The formal is other-focussed and requires less of our energies. In the world of ‘becauses’, we create justifications to explain away our current situations and find scapegoats to blame for our conditions without having to physically change anything.

Things become singular in the path of least resistance. We have no sense of the cost of the effect on us when it is invisible. So, we cannot calculate the payoff for getting out of it. Over time, this pattern becomes fully entrenched in our lives and we lose our abilities to take responsibility of ourselves.

The key is to refocus our attention to the back of each block and avoid agreeing with our becauses. Only then do we have access to everything that we have already had to create our breakthroughs.

This article was 1st written on 27 Jul 2010.
Copyright 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Stun-gunning Your Organisation into Inventiveness

Critical Factor of Innovative Organisations No. 8

History has revealed many stories about organisations moving into long periods of stagnation and inertia after enjoying years of growth and prosperity. Many organisational scientists have attributed this condition to the organisations’ failure to innovate, adapt and transform to match the evolutionary and disruptive changes in the environment, markets and stakeholders’ expectations.

Organisations which have found a way to keeping their workforce stun-gunned against complacency are able to insure themselves against this malaise.

Humans always want to avoid conditions of atrophy by staying within or reaching for homeostasis environments. In a world full of uncertainties, the unknowns bring about great discomforts. These cause the person to tense up, which is negative and exhausting. He wants to reduce or remove this tension because he recognises that an environment in homeostasis brings about satisfaction and happiness. This motivates him to recognise that new solutions have to be found, and the old ways, which no longer work, have to be replaced.

However, not all stun-guns produce the intended effects. Some are not blunt enough to push the organisation out of its fixed ways. Others are too blunt that the over-stunned organisation implodes onto itself. Innovative organisations differentiate
themselves from the ordinary ones by being able to find the right mix of stun-guns that help grow the organisation continuously.

Innovative organisations fully understand this human phenomenon and use a number of unique stun-guns - policies, methods, processes, and systems, to keep their workforce in a challenging but supportive atrophied state so that these generate the needed forces and energies to keep their organisations innovative, adaptable and renewing.

Here are the links for the other critical factors of innovative organisations:

• No 1. Purpose Driven Organisation

• No 2. Understanding the Demonic Nature of Vision

• No 3. Risks of Playing No Games & Being Off the Board

• No 4. Fearless Organisation Environment

• No 5. Openness is in the Eradication of Fantasies

• No 6. System of Authentic Sharing

• No 7. Human Resource Investment Is Not About Spending But Creating Opportunities for Learning

• No 9. Focus on the True Purpose of Celebrating Success and Contribution

• No 10. Fully Appreciating the True Meaning of an Innovative Team

This article was 1st written on 7 July 2010.
Copyright 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Keeping Your Promise and Honoring Your Words

Active Listening Series No. 5

Many of us cannot clearly distinguish the difference between keeping our promises and honouring our words, and this handicap has unnecessarily punished us for a very long time.

Let me share with you a story to expand on this idea.

Thomas is a loving husband and caring father who recently lost his wife to cancer. He has made a commitment to Wendy that he will be both the father and mother to two of their teenage daughters. The family is not well-to-do, and the illness has set them back by tens of thousand of dollars. Thomas is struggling to keep things going with the meager wage he receives each week but he is too proud to ask for help.

I had not met Thomas since we have completed full-time National Service. It is by a chanced meeting along Orchard Road during Christmas Day that we begin to meet regularly for tea.

‘Happy Chinese New Year!’ an exhausted looking Thomas called out to me when we met at The Central, the shopping centre, recently.

‘Same to you!’ I replied and follow with, ‘How have you been?’

After we had ordered our meals and beverages, he continued, ‘I am tired.’

‘I can see. Tell me more,’ I encouraged.

‘I have been avoiding Jenny, my younger daughter,’ was his short answer.

As we began having our meals and sipping tea, I had learnt that Thomas was feeling very guilty for not bringing Jenny, who had done well in her P.S.L.E examinations, to Malacca.

‘You know, I really want to reward her with this trip but if we go, I have to bring the elder daughter as well. I just cannot afford it. Each day, I can see so much of anger in her eyes. I am so guilty that I left for work early and return home late to avoid seeing her. I am a failure. I am a bad father,’ he finished off.

I can feel Thomas’ sorrow and pain, and begin to share with him the difference between keeping a promise and honouring our words.

‘Isn’t they the same?’ Thomas asked after hearing the two phrases.

‘No, and this is the source of your current sorry and pain,’ and I distinguished their differences.

A promise is a declaration that something will or will not be done. Sometimes, we do fail to deliver the promise. However, we need not have to punish ourselves because of this with guilt and stay away from the people we had make the promise to.

‘But she is my daughter. How could I feel less guilty?’ Thomas asked.

‘You see, we feel guilty and want to avoid the very people we have make promises to not because we have failed to deliver the promises. We do all these because we are afraid that they think that we are dishonourable, and being dishonourable means a loss of face for us, which is painful. As they are close and important to us, the solution of staying away from them only brings us sorrow and more pain,’ I continued, ‘Honouring our word is about giving a warrant and assurance that the promise will be fulfilled even when it is not delivered at this moment. We are honourable as long as we stop running away from the very people we have given our word to and acknowledge with them about the lapse. We are honourable when we stay committed and being responsible in seeing that the promise is delivered at the next available opportunity.’

‘And this is the difference between keeping a promise and honouring our word,’ I concluded.

A few months later, we were again chatting over tea and I have learnt from Thomas that his relationship with Jenny has vastly improved.

‘What have you done?’ I asked.

Thomas has told me that he had a talk with her Jenny after our conversation to explain to her his difficulties. What has came as a surprise for Thomas was he had found out that the source of her anger was not about the broken promise but because Thomas had avoiding her. More surprisingly, Jenny wanted to contribute her savings to make the trip possible for the whole family.

‘So you went to Malacca?’ I asked.

‘Yes! We did,’ he said, ‘During the Easter holidays, and it is the best holiday we ever have as a family since Wendy had left us.’

This article was 1st written on 13 May 2010.
Copyright 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Decision is a Life Without Choices

Active Listening Series No. 4

There were disappointments when I announced in December of 2006 that I would leave the Ministry at the beginning of the following year. Several of my close colleagues had sat me down trying to discourage me and a few had made attempts to find management positions elsewhere in the organisation which I could rotate to. These, I had politely turned down but I am forever indebted to them for their kindness and for standing up for me. I am glad I know such friends after many years of championing change, excellence and transformation in the organisation.

I had struggled at length with the thought of leaving the organisation and this had begun as early as 2005 after a challenging year of working with stakeholders and constituents who were only keen in preserving their personal agendas and current ways at the expense of the organisation's. I would have left then if not for the promises I had made at the start of the transformation which I want to honour. These were only largely fulfilled towards the end of 2006. However, during this period, I was never happy, that's until I understood the distinction between choice and decision.

We cannot be making choices when we are instinctively driven to look at all the options and constantly analyse them for their considerations, justifications and consequences. The option that is finally selected, whether in our opinion is the best one available or the most satisfising, is created out of strict logic and reasoning by examining the differences between costs and payoffs. As rational men, we invest in those schemes with more payoffs. This means, the option that we finally select is seemingly sound and therefore, is pre-determined and predictable.

As humans, we want to be satisfied by the knowledge that nothing is forced upon us and we have the power to choose. So, we pretend that we have exercised free will in our selection. However, the reality is that we have allowed falsehood to creep in our minds and we become happy mixing up 'making decisions' with 'making choices'. However, they are never the same.

Thing are done differently in the world of choices. We look at what the world has to offer to us and we just choose. We do not have to account for all the considerations, surface all those justifications, and worry about the consequences. We just do it. In making choice, we do not let our innate need to fulfil our expectations and those of others get in the way.

The realm of making decision is very sinister. As we look at those considerations, justifications and consequences, we are using a substantial amount of our cognitive and emotive energy measuring, assessing, evaluating, and deciding on our options, and then we expect the decision to be good and things will happen as decided. We are conditioned and motivated to expect something good coming out of these efforts. However, while the options we finally narrow down to are predictable, the outcomes are not. Things do not unfold the way we hope they should and there bound to be unexpected events leading us to disappointments, bewilderments and dejections. In these, we face unhappiness but it is never the outcomes that disappoint. Always, it is the expectations that are, and so the misalignment between real and expected outcome becomes the source of our sorrows.

In making a choice, there is no expenditure of energy. Choices are made randomly and we develop the capacity to receive what comes our way. There is no disappointment because we made no effort to calculate and to expect something. Since there are no expectations, there will be no disappointments. Without these, there is no unhappiness because everything is always within the scheme of things.

These insights into making decisions and making choices caused me to seriously rethink about how I struggle with the option of staying and the option of leaving. I finally chose and I officially tendered my resignation at the end of December 2006. I feel free and happy, and everything is always within my expectation because I have none before I left.

This article was 1st written on 5 Jan 2010.

Copyright 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.