Intuitive Nature of the 4th Conversation

Active Listening No. 8

So far, a total of seven articles has been written to expound the various aspects of active listening, and it is now a good time to revisit and recap the key elements that have been laid out in the series before moving into the eighth article.

In Article 1, I have presented the characteristics of the first conversation and described the fundamentals of the second.  In the formal, the conversation is one that is oratorically expressed, and parties in this engagement are capable of hearing from each other. It is as if our thoughts and ideas were placed on the center stage and available for all who were present.

Unlike the first conversation, the latter exists as a conversation where the speaker and listener is one and the same. Here, the stage is brought into his inner sanctum, and he and only he hears the on-going of this piece of dialogue. Occasionally, the stage slips out from behind the curtains, but without the context, the listeners in this external domain are totally clueless about the exact meaning of the stuffs that are accidently disclosed.

In article 2, I have used a story to explore the mechanics of the third conversation. These are conversations that had happened in the past which we are no longer able to hear now. It is as if that the beams of the stage have been completely dismantled but the binds that had held them together still exist everywhere; tugging our thoughts about and affecting our  decisions and actions into the future

Intuitive Nature of the Fourth Conversation

With these descriptions etched at the back of our mind, let's explore the central piece of this article. Unlike the previous three conversations, the fourth is totally self-directed. We do not have natural abilities to shape it nor control its flow and movement

The fourth conversation has the following characteristics:

1.  It usually appears and disappears instantly,

2.  It usually comes in short bursts,

3.  It usually becomes forgotten very quickly, and

4.  It is usually easily interrupted or disrupted by distractions.

This suggests that we are unable to call on its faculties as and when we need them. It is as if the conversation has a mind of its own and is capable of being there without our explicit request, evolving into more complete forms without our conscious input, and influencing our decisions and actions without our exact permission. It is there when it is there and not when it is not. Even with these expressions, we cannot not label the conversation as dreams since they occur when we are awake. Rather, it is our subconscious extending itself into the conscious. It is the fountain from which we draw our insights and enlightenment, and the bedrock of creativity and new knowledge. We, as individuals, communities, organisations, and societies, depend on this conversation for our very own existence.

Although I have said that we do not have the natural ability to tap into this meta-level resource, I have not said that we cannot acquire it through practise. The fourth conversation exists, evolves and influences from within the space of the second conversation. This means, to access the fourth conversation, we need to have good command and control of this working space.

By commanding the space, we call on the second conversation whenever we need its services. By controlling the space, we keep the space quiet and give the fourth conversation the invitation it needs to consciously develop within it. Without the clutter associated with the second conversation, we become more acute in listening to the on-going of the fourth conversation and in nudging it forward without interfering with its form.

So, there are two muscles that we need to build. The first is the muscle to hold the second conversation in check so that the incoming fourth conversation is not destroyed by the second's always evaluative, judgmental and decisive properties.

The second muscle we need to acquire is the ability to nudge the conversation forward without participating in its contents. Here, we hold the space by thinking the thinking behind the fourth conversation so that it gains clarity on its own.

Here are the integrated steps for manipulating the fourth conversation in the space of the second:

• Acknowledge - Become aware of our internal conversations and acknowledge that we are not deranged when we talk to ourselves, 

• Assess - Determine if our second conversations is cluttering its space, 

• Intervene - Shout into this space to demand for its silence if it is cluttered, 

• Wait - As the second conversation begins to quiet down, wait for the fourth conversation to populate its space, Be patient if the fourth conversation is silent. Just wait and it will begin to speak. Let it speaks for a while before moving into the last step. 

• Clarify - Think about the thinking behind our fourth conversation to gain a higher level of cognitive effectiveness. Let the fourth conversation speaks its mind. 

Both of these muscles are not something that comes naturally to us and therefore we have to build them up over time through practise.

By executing these integrated steps, we give the fourth conversation a chance to come into existence, and with our presence of mind, we can effectively set the space up to capture and play with it until   something valuable comes to us.

This article was 1st written on 28 Nov 2012.
Copyright 2012. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Developmental Perspective of Innovation

Looking @ Innovation from Inside Out

We know the value innovation brings to organisations. It could provide us the access to compete in traditionally unavailable markets. It could also create blue ocean markets that earn us supernormal profits.

However, we cannot depend on a single innovation to compete in these markets. Our competitors are always attracted to these markets because of their profits and are motivated to leapfrog with innovations combined from and with more advance technologies that deliver substantial value at costs driven by greater production economies. This means that time is never be on our side regardless of the characteristics or conditions of our innovation lifecycle. Someone will take the pole position if we are to rest on the successes of our only creation. To secure our leadership position so that we continue to prosper into the future, we need a stream of innovations to compete with others that are coming into the markets.

Although the word 'innovation' has been widely used in our national discourse since 2000, this does not mean that its true meaning is fully appreciated and understood. It remains a jargon and big word even for the most educated person in our society. When asked about innovation, we typically hear people describing it as something new, unique and original. However, as architects of our organisation's growth and prosperity, we need to put on a different lens and move beyond this simplistic view of innovation in order to create the stream of innovation mentioned in the previous paragraph. We need to examine the engine that creates them.

When we strip the engine of an innovative organisation of its casings, we will typically find numerous pipelines of innovative projects in different stages of development weaved into a fabric of supportive culture (like value, beliefs and attitudes) and enabling resources (like tools, methods and processes). On this mesh of activities, opportunities are identified, explored and assessed for their potentials before they are exploited to grow the business. However, the flow inside each pipeline is not always dynamic, making the fabric creased and wrinkled. There are a number of obstacles that obstruct its flow, and the people engineering organisational level innovation needs to be informed to help reduce these effects on their efforts.

On further examination of the engine, we will also discover that innovations and the resources used for creating them are not the only artifacts that flow through its pathways. People and the teams they lead do as well. Innovation does not exist without the cognitive investments and entrepreneurial expenditures of

people. This suggests that to use innovation as the multiplier to win at the market place, we have to take care of the people in innovation; to pay attention to the motivations behind wanting to do good for oneself, and one's community and society.

Many have recognised the importance of diversity in teams - diverse work preferences, orientation towards problems, and workplace skills. However, such teams are challenging to create, manage and sustain because of differing cultures, conflicting values and competing interests. In the age of self-determination and self-empowerment, the onus of resolving these problematic differences cannot rest squarely on the shoulders of the leaders but on the team members as well.

The last group of artifacts that keep the traction in the pipelines is the permission, protection, support and push the management gives to teams to enable them to fight against the immunity organisations impose on the change brought on by innovations. These are resources external of the teams' sphere of control and have to be acquired. This means, to access them, the teams have to secure the stakeholders buy-in for the change.

Innovation is about doing things in ways that have never been done before, and this is problematic with stakeholders. In the absence of hindsight, they tend to be more adverse to risks and inclined to reject the change out of fear instead of putting in place resources and supporting structures to mitigate them so that change has a chance to take place. By measuring its leading indicators for success, the team, after thinking big, is enabled to start small, scale fast and impact deep to complete the conversion and implementation process of innovation. Therefore, stakeholder communication is about allying these uncertainties by focusing their rationality on its possibilities for success rather on its propensity for failure.

This article was 1st written on 16 February 2011, updated on 2 August 2011,

and subsequently published on 7 November 2011.

Copyright 2011. Anthony Mok. All rights reserved.

Fully Appreciating the True Meaning of an Innovative Team

Critical Factor of Innovative Organisations No. 10

Innovation is not a product of sterile amalgamation of ideas. Instead, it involves a number of people, who are propelled by different motivations, driving forward the belief that their solution will produce the benefits that the public wants, and they will go about amassing the resources to make it happen for all who wants to enjoy these benefits.

The birth of an innovation begins when a new opportunity calls for ideas to be connected in ways that were never been done before. The people, who had identified the opportunity and created the original idea, may continue to expand different amount of effort to prove and translate it from mere concept into real device that unorthodoxly solve problems and truly bring value to their stakeholders. Therefore, innovation is about the unique way the device creates and delivers value to those who needs it rather than the device itself that makes this happens for these stakeholders.

Metaphorically, it is as if that the innovation flows through a pipeline greased by the ideas that its sponsors have to offer. Since organisations cannot depend on a single innovation, this pipeline will consist the flows of differing threads of innovations with varying degrees of penetration championed by a multitude of different players.

The unit of innovation is the team, and to tactically manage innovation, we need to manage the people behind these innovations. More specifically, it is about managing the dynamics of a team of people, empowered by different talents and skills, who are envisioning, creating and influencing extraordinarily for its cause - bringing the innovation to market. In other words, we cannot leave the evolution of innovative teams to chance. They have to exist by design and be developed through aggressive nurturing.

So, what sort of teams should we cultivate? I called these 'Tag Teams'.

Tag teams are different from ordinary work teams in many ways. First, their members have highly diverse work preferences. Some would love to challenge existing norms by creating new ways of doing things. Others would prefer to plan and organise resources to support the task at hand. Still, a couple would really enjoy directing work and producing outcomes, while the rest would never give up the opportunity of connecting with thier counterparts to promote their ideas.

Also, collectively, members of tag teams are more likely to see beyond their difficulties and problems, and appreciate these as challenges for doing better or as opportunities to access their breakthroughs. They tend to be more resilient and hardy as they see these more as avenues for greater effectiveness and efficiency than obstacles that derail them from their main focus; that is to bring their innovation to market.

Finally, tag teams possess a set of skills that they inherent from their members. There are a total of thirteen skills, and they range from skills that keep them operationally effective and efficient, to skills that spiritually bond the teams to their cause and to their organisations, and to skills that provide greater clarity into the strategies of getting their intended outcome and strengthen the drive for their cause. They use these skills to navigate through the dynamics of working together as a collection of differentiated people. They also apply them to negotiate through the myriad of organisational red-tapes. There is nothing unique about these skills except that no one in the team monopolises any of them, which is unusually unique for tag teams. This means the skills and their competencies are widely distributed, and every member is responsible for their application and accountable for their outcomes for the overall common good of the tag team.

Just like in football teams, tag teams are constraint by their own temperament arising from the interplay of these diverse preferences, orientations, and competencies. Organisational leaders, like coaches, need to understand the working of these elements at their component level as well to appreciate their interactions when they come together to truly know the means of creating, developing and harnessing tag teams for innovation.

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 9. Focus on the True Purpose of Celebrating Success and Contribution

This article was 1st written on 1 Feb 2011.

Copyright 2011. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

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.

Career Derailment Profile

Eight Drivers that Derail Careers

Our career may be progressing smoothly with our career goals largely achieved and our future career prospects remain bright. However, this is not a guarantee that we are forever successful at our workplace and in our work life. We may be hit by a snag that slows down or even halt advancement entirely.

Sometimes, we become aware of these when we saw our peers progressing ahead of us but we do not know the way out of the situation. At other times, we only know we are unhappy and stressed by events that we feel we have no control over but yet we are never able to pinpoint accurately the source behind these. When you are afflicted by these experiences, it means your career may have been derailed and you need to know how to put it back on track.

This profile highlights the drivers that may help explain the challenges you may be facing with the growth and development of your career. This could be used as a early warning device informing you of your propensity for derailment. Each driver is coded to provide you with a colour indication of the likelihood of you being derailed in your career and the drivers behind this propensity. It could also used to highlight the prevailing reasons for the slowing down or halting in your career progression.

The eight drivers and Slideshare that derail careers are presented below:

Career Derailment Profile - Uncovering Your Drivers for Derailment

View more presentations from Xiaohao .

Skill Fit

Talks about the fit between the skills we process and the skills required to complete the tasks in the job.

Judgement

Refers to the quality of the discourse you engaged with others prior to reaching a decision.

Radar

Indicates the frequency your network informs you of the developments that are taking place in your organisation.

Style Fit

Points to the fit between your personal style at work with those of your supervisors, peers and subordinates. Style at work is formulated by the way you relate to other, use information, reach your decisions, and organise yourself.

Branding

Shows how reputable and well-known you are amongst your superiors, peers and subordinates in terms of your ability to get things done and the value you created for your organisation.

Relationship

Tells about the quality of your relationships you have wlth your superiors, colleagues, and peers.

Job Choice

Informs you if your job and the experience it provides bring you a step closer in realising your personal aspirations

Balanced Life

States the level of integration you have achieved between your work and your personal life.

This article was 1st written on 19 May 2009 and updated on 17 Aug 2010.
Copyright 2009 & 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Competencies of Effective Team Players

The leader has always been expected to play a pivotal role in making things work in the team. He does this by guiding its resources and creative potentials to deliver the outcomes expected from him to justly for the existence of the team.

To deliver these outcomes, it is always thought that one of the key roles and responsibilities of the leader is to develop his team so that its members acquire the skills and competencies necessary for its success.

However, as more Generation Y’s begin their careers in the workplace, this traditional perspective is fast becoming obsolete. Generation Y recognises the importance of being employable and trusted by their superiors, and is more likely to leave if these growth and independence factors are missing at the workplace.

Given these inclinations, it is no longer true that the success of the team is entirely dependent on the effectiveness of its leader. Each member in the team wants a say about the future of the team. They want to lead at the appropriate moment. They want to contribute as thinking value-adding entities rather than a mere factor of production.

Given this atmosphere of change, new competencies and practices of a team member begin to emerge and these are the ability to:

• Tap into the wisdom of the crowd


• Celebrate contributions authentically


• Understand ourselves


• Leverage on the diversity around us


• Being heedfully considerate


• Continuously acknowledge, accept, and inspire the Self


• Honour our words
  

Tap into the Wisdom of the Crowd

The democratisation of information and knowledge, and the freedom of labour to bring their talent to where knowledge could be created are changing the world. This is globalisation. These are the effects of the Internet and mindsets of Generation Y, who are beginning to dominate the workplace.

This means knowledge and talent no longer a privilege only available and accessible to a few. The power has shifted into the hands of the majority. This is community power in action and it means that information, knowledge and talent is freely available out there. We need to know the methods to tap into this wisdom to be successful.

We need to recognise this phenomenon. We need to acquire a mindset that is congruent with the world and skills to collect and expand knowledge. One of such skills is the facilitation of conversations with others.

There are two basic elements in facilitating a conversation - Questioning and Paraphrasing.

In questioning, we use a number of questioning techniques to draw our counterpart into a conversation and in the process we uncover his intensions and learn of his knowledge. In paraphrasing, we summarise pieces of the conversation in our words and present it back to the audience for verification, confirmation and expansion.

When we are able to do these effectively and do them regularly, we are more capable of uncovering the opportunities of creating breakthroughs in our endeavours.

Celebrate Contribution Authentically

When we celebrate success, we make an attempt to present a deserving individual on stage to an audience and to have him receive an award from someone senior in the organisation to recognise, honour and celebrate his deeds. We spend time, efforts and money to recognise and reward individuals who had done a really good job. However, this is not an authentic celebration and the awardees know it. They is not stupid. Why is this so?

This is because we celebrate his success in our perspective as organisers of the event. In doing so, the celebration is not about him. The event is actually meant for us to demonstrate to the world that we are an enlightened organisation. We are celebrating for our sake and not for anyone else. This is inauthentic.

To truly celebrate, we have to understand the awardees’ reasons for wanting to be honoured. To answer this question, we need to ask 'why do we want to be celebrated?'

We want to be celebrated because we crave for positive feedback and affirmation from others. We want to know if we are moving in the right direction. A positive feedback is a strong incentive for inspiring us to do better and an affirmation is enough to motivate us to commit further. We stay driven this way.

Feedback and affirmation that inspires and creates aspirations are usually expressed in language. However, many organisations choose not to feedback or affirm in the most powerful way. Instead, they create symbols in their place; in the forms of scrolls, plaques, trophies, medals, ceremonial events and photo opportunities. These have their own power as they are capable of visibly demonstrate the importance that the occasion and the organisation behind the event. However, the message is not one of feedback or affirmation. They are lost when the organisation asserts itself into the forefront and talk about itself at the expense of the awardees. This is when the true purpose of celebration is lost. This is where the awardees become aware that they are just mere instruments to enable the company to showcase the quality of its organisation.

When we see through the instrumentation in the celebration, it also spells the end of real celebration. It no longer holds the sacred purpose and meaning of feedback and affirmation, and therefore lost its effectiveness for creating inspirations and aspirations in the awardees. This means when we celebrate without thinking about the organisation and without all those instrumentation, we are then really and truly celebrating success in an authentic way.

Understanding Ourselves

Sun Tzu had said that to win any battle, we need to understand ourselves and our opponents. If we only know one and not the other, our chance of winning is fifty percentage. This chance is further reduced to zero when we do not know either.

There are many ways to know ourselves and one such ways is to understand the ways we interact with our colleagues. When we first join our organisation, we make a few observations about our surrounding and the people in it. Generally, we make two kinds of assessment - we evaluate the environment to determine it favourability and we assess for the amount of control we have over others.

By putting these two together, we can produce a two-by-two matrix, which informs us on the kinds of behaviour we should adopt at work to interact with others. This matrix provides us with four behavioural modes. These are found in the diagram below:

In dominance, we have the advantage of a favourable environment and control to dictate what could be accompanied. When our environment is positive and enabling but we lack of control over the things we want complete, we will have to change and adopt a more influencing and persuasive stance.

We become more stead fasten when we are constraint by having no control over what has to be done and the environment is not altogether supportive. In such a circumstance, being calm and steady may be the strategy to survive the situation. Finally, if the environment is negative but we have a say over what should be done, we could take on a more conscientious and calm approach in dealing with the interactions we have with our peers.

We must accept that we cannot change others but ourselves. If we are aware of ourselves and could change our behaviours with dexterity, we could increase our propensity of accomplishing our goals.

Leverage on the Diversity Around Us

New knowledge is created when existing information and knowledge is combined and recombined with other existing information and knowledge. However, because this information and knowledge resides in individuals and not within the systems, these combination and recombination activities will only happened when the people share with each other.

When we talk about diversity, we want to make use of the information and knowledge arising from many differing backgrounds, exposures and experiences as the source for generating new knowledge. This could only be afforded when there is diversity in the group and people in the group share honestly.

We rarely share honestly and usually there is not enough of diversity in the group to carry enough of information and knowledge to make the sharing and combining powerful enough. Therefore, it is not natural that the group would always have the mix of people we desired and they would share without reservation.

These have to be created by design and cultivated with time. We need skills to do these and there are six of these. These are communication, active listening, relationship building within the group and with other stakeholders, problem solving and counselling.

When we acquired these skills, we could build enough of trust with each other to share authentically and fully tap into the wisdom diversity has for the group.

Being Heedfully Considerate

When we say we will consider something, it means that we will make an effort to look at both the pros and cons of that thing and weigh them for their implications before deciding on the next course of action. This act is call considering and the evaluations produce a list of considerations. An informed decision is one made by choosing an decision option that produces the best outcomes but impact the stakeholders the least after examining these considerations.

When we are heedful to others, we make a promise to ourselves to take care of the feelings and emotions of others for each act that we are about to make. In doing so, we think not just about choosing, deciding and executing our action, we also look at whether our action will cause harm to others as well.

Therefore, heedful consideration could be seen as a game where each of us is constantly and consistently is mindful about the consequences of our actions on others, and diligently making calculations of the tradeoffs between outcomes and their impact.

If the cons is greater than the pros, the current decision choice is not workable. If the negative impact is greater than the positive outcome, this decision option may need tweaking. If the impact could not be significantly negated by other acts, another decision option must be made available.

The fundamental rule is not to carry out any course of action that we are unsure of its consequences and impact. There is always a better option in existence. We have to look for them. This is being heedfully considerate and the seed for harmonious relationships.

Continuously Acknowledge, Accept, and Inspire Ourselves

Language could present itself in many forms. Words, symbols and gestures could by themselves or in combination use as expressions of the language and we use these to express our world.

We use language to describe and perceive the world. We use language to appreciate and evaluate our environment. We also use language to interact with our surrounding. Our thoughts are created in language. This is the importance of language.

This is also the bane of language. If our thoughts are made up of negative language, our world, our choices and our behaviours become negative. This means who we are to ourselves and to others is determined by the language we use in our thoughts when we think about ourselves and of others. This calls for us to be fully aware of our thoughts and the quality of the language used in these thoughts.

No human is perfect and therefore we are fallible. We need to acknowledge and accept this true identity rather than to mask it or run away from it. However, not all of us are capable of forgiving ourselves for the errors and failures we had committed, and we beat ourselves up with the language we use on ourselves. We could call these guilt and self-blame but these are in a language we understand and we never hesitate to use it to beat ourselves up when we are unable to maintain our facade of perfection.

Life should not have to be like this. Like you, I am not unique. Like you, I fall too. Just like all creatures in the world, I have my own weaknesses and could fall. Like you, I may be able to 'cover' my tracks but there is no embarrassment and shame for not doing so and be honest about it.

By accepting ourselves for who we are, we are capable of forgiving ourselves and continuing to be inspired by the true intent we want with our lives. We are not obstructed by the ghosts of our past because we know that we are never better than anyone else. So, where is the fear when all human are equal? This awareness makes us unstoppable from being great.

When we could look beyond this need to constantly look good to ourselves and in front of others, we unlock ourselves from our constraints so that we are able to attain a higher realm of experiences and self-awareness, and these are the recipes of self-efficacy and self-fulfilment.

Honour Our Word

In our life, one way or another and no matter how hard we had tried, we will break some of the promises that we had made. These could be promises we had made to ourselves or to others.

The pain is not in breaking these promises. Breaking our promises is easy. We just do not carry out the promised act. The source of the pain is really from the guilt of knowing someone is going to be disappointed and knowing how untrue the excuses we had used to explain away these lapses.

Humans are incredible creatures. We like to avoid pain and in these instances, we deal with it by pretending that the promises never ever existed or we took the escapist route by avoiding the person we had given our promises to. Over time we forget, even for those promises we made to ourselves.

However, we do not have to live like this. We can get out of this vicious cycle of guilt and flight instinct by recognising that there is a difference between keeping to our promise and honouring our word.

In keeping to our promise, we are prone to lapses and the feeling of guilt arising from our inability to forgive ourselves. In honouring our word, we acknowledge our occasional failures of not able to deliver our promises. We are capable of articulating authentically the lapses and sought forgiveness from those we had promised.

We can restart life again because we know it is useless to bash ourselves with our guilt or run away from the people we had made promises. We know we are committed to stay on course and recognise that lapses are just transient occurrences that are part and parcel of staying committed. People who honour their words do not dwell on meaningless self-criticisms but keep looking forward and moving ahead to find opportunities to realise the word.

People who practises honouring his word stays honest to himself and remains powerful throughout his life.

This article was 1st written on 19 May 2009.
Copyright 2009. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

The Natural Laws that Govern Our World

How Breakthroughs are Different From Continuous Improvements

When we do improvements to a product, service or any other things, we are making an attempt to increase or reduce something related to it. This could be an increase in terms of the product or service's performance or its consistency in delivering its desired outcomes or the value the creation process brings to the consumers. Improvement could also come in the form of a decrease in the externalities the product or service brings to the environment or society, or a reduction in the complexities of moving it through its value chain or in lowering of prices the consumers have to bear for these products and services.

Diminishing Returns of Continuous Improvements

There will be costs in bringing about these benefits and the organisation will continue commit to doing improvement up to the point where the costs of the improvement equals to the benefits derived from it. This means that there are diminishing returns in all kinds of continuous improvement.

However, what is the driver for this and what could we do given this reality? To appreciating these, we have to first understand the natural laws that govern the technologies that create and operate the product and service, bring the product and service to the consumers, and deliver the value in the product and service to them. Let's go through this thought experiment to let me illustrate this driver to you.

Let's assume that there is a big rectangular field near our house. Surrounding this field are barbed-wired fences, and there are two gates facing each other diagonally across. These gates are linked by a L-shaped cement-paved pedestrian walkway. We have to use this walkway everyday because this is the only way to get to the train station from our house. The diagram of the houses, field, gates, walkway and train station is presented below.

Several years later, the local government had decided to improve the walkway by tearing it up and repaving it. The new walkway has shortened the distance one has to travel between the two gates. Since then, there have been no further changes except repaving works because of its wear and tear. You have written to the authorities about the needs for further improvements and they have always told you that this is the best they could come up with. Why is this so?

Constraining Effects of the Governing Laws

This comes about because there are no more ideas capable of shortening the distance. Further changes could only be motivated by a fundamental shift in the natural laws that govern the whole scheme of things. Look at our walkway again and we could see Pythagoras' Theorem (a2 + b2 = c2) as the natural law that is now defining the distance between the two gates. According to the theorem, the shortest distance between two opposing corners is directly across. The construction of all other point-to-point walkways are frivolous and a waste of public funds because nothing is shorter than this. If we could shift this natural law that governs the field, we can find new avenues for new improvements. In this thought experiment, the theorem is capable of being re-expressed to focus the equation at different perspectives but in its simplest form it is incapable of being reconfigured. This explains why the current layout is the best solution given the constraints imposed by the current law.

So, how could we identify new avenues for improvements when we are unable to instrument the natural laws? We do this by examining the variables in the natural laws. In the thought experiment, the law that dictates the length of the diagonals is the Pythagoras' Theorem and the equation is:

a2 + b2 = c2

In this equation, we know that the sum of the length and breathe of the field will always be longer than the route that cuts diagonally across the field. We also know that there is a positive relationship between its length and breathe, and its diagonal. This means, the shortening of the diagonal requires a proportionate reduction in the dimensions in either or both the length and breathe of the field, which will cause the reorientation of the opposing gates. If this is feasible, this wlll become a new source for improvement up to the point where these movements no longer have meaning.

Motivation for Breakthrough Thinking

When these dimensional entities are invariable, the diagonal is constraint and nothing could change this. Now, we need to innovate to find a breakthrough in the way we think about shortening the route. We question not about how to reduce the distance to reach the station fast. We ask about how we could reach the station quickly, and we may consider using the travellator, which allows us to expend less energy to perform the task and arrives at half the time. We have leave behind distance and adopted speed as the new mode of thinking for breakthroughs. This means, in breakthroughs, we need to become aware of and avoid being influenced by the current natural laws.

Why is this so important to the innovation practitioners? This is so because the true defining difference between do continuous improvements and creating breakthroughs rests in recognising whether we are working within the confines of a current natural law or transiting out of it to be into another. Without this awareness, we will forever be confined by the current laws and only capable of doing improvements.

This article was 1st written on 19 May 2009.

Copyright 2009. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Human Resource Investment Is Not About Spending But Creating Opportunities for Learning

Critical Facotors of Innovative Organisations No. 7

Usually, when we think about investing in people, our immediate thoughts are about training and development. While these are essential, they cannot be seen as the ends to a cause. Often, it is this misplaced emphasis that is the source of frustration for many Human Resource practitioners.

Ends Versus Means

In the 'ends' mentality, people are just sent for training and development, and it is expected that results will follow without considering what could have happened after the learning interventions. When this section of the value creation process has been truncated, Human Resource practitioners lost the mechanism to translate the learning individuals may have gained at these training and development events into human productivity at the workplace. In this space, lt is a challenge to separate the benefits of these investments from the financial results of the overall performance of the organisation. There are consequences with such a difficulty. It includes management assigning lower priorities to people development and seeking avenues with seemingly less dubious and more direct impact to productivity, like outsourcing or reconfiguration of the labour-machine mix, to improve the organisation. These will severely constraint the roles human will play in creativity and innovation in the organisation, which could lead to the decline of a nation.

Unlike the 'ends' mentality, the 'means' perspective recognises that the true value of training and development is in their transference at the workplace. There are follow-throughs that practitioners recognise as important and they put these into practice and build them into their corporate policies and governance structure to facilitate the actual transference of knowledge, skills and attitudes into creative ideas, innovations and entrepreneurial activities at the workplace. These are the financially accountable results of training and development.

Creating Opportunities for Learning

Some follow-throughs include:

• Creating opportunities for people to interact with those who have successfully used the skills, practice what they have learnt, give them a sense of contribution, and make the skill become second nature to them.


• Exposing the people to different roles so that they experience innovation from different perspectives. In doing so, they obtain a better appreciation of the roles and functions of innovation.


• Taking the routine and mundane work out of people so that this could translated into spare time for them to look at the future instead of overly focus in dealing with the past in the 'now' space.


• Giving people the freedom to experiment and space make errors and mistakes so that true learning could happen.

Innovative Organisations See the Larger Picture

Highly innovative organisations are capable of differentiating the larger picture of creating opportunities for the transference of learning from spending money mindlessly. They appreciate the full extent of the value creation process for investing in people and the amount of work involved, many which is beyond the scope of training and development, and the responsibilities of the trainers. They have avoided the zero-sum game of making the trainers the scapegoats for learning failures and went beyond managing the superficial aurora of learning successes.

Here is an interesting video that talk about giving people the opportunities to use their learned abilities:

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 8. Stun-gunning Your Organisation into Inventiveness

• 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 19 May 2009 and 7 July 2010.
Copyright 2009 and 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.