Escape the Past, Invent the Future

In a Q&A session after our GM presentation on re-organization, vision and mission, upcoming projects, and global undertaking, one of our guys posed a question about job security. I had no idea what prompted him to ask this question as he is one of our high performers. Perhaps, he was voicing concerns that some others might have.

The classic response was that we are working in a big enough company, on the top lists of Fortune 500, operating globally with diverse energy production and opportunities. Region-wise, two third of the energy demand would be coming from Pacific rim, with industrializing China hunger for more and more energy. On personal space, I was adding to remind our guys to keep on maintaining professionalism and preparing for the future in light of the next generation of skills (probably some of our guys were not quite comfortable with this notion). Referring to the best-seller Competing for the Future (Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad), we shall be ready to escape the past, do something to invent the future. An old book, yet still inspiring, that I bought a few years ago in Houston. Hamel and Prahalad indicated that inability to escape the past and inability to invent the future are great company diseases that make them failed.

As for our professional life, it is human that we all are proud of our great achievements in the past, and frequently that we are content with current performance that breed success. The one, among other things, that we might get trapped with this is that "success confirm strategy" mindset. We keep on doing things in the same way with the same thinking as it's already "proven" before that it makes us "success". We might "win" in the past because of abundant resources and it gets into subconsciious mind that "resources subsitute for creativity". The landscape of the future would require us to creatively adjust from time to time our approach to success. It might not be an immediate future, yet we need to get prepared. The "blue ocean" of the future is opportunities for those ready with new skill sets to tap in and reap the benefit. We have been seeing, for instance, that "customer subscription-based fee" is replaced with "ads revenue stream" in the business model such as Google, Yahoo and the like.

First thing first would be a question as to how that we have strong enough radar screen as to capture the fish of the future. How do we get in touch with the future. More importantly, do we have the courage to cross borders and go beyond -- out of current comfort zones. Let alone, if the risks are clear and the rewards (whatever huge it might be) are still a possibility. As Robert Kiyosaki (in Rich Dad Poor Dad, or other books I did not recall), we are always waiting for a green light. The light will never turn green, we have to make it green!

Get our mind to smartly read any leading indicator while wisely enough to deal with lagging indicators. Success of the past is a sweet memory, but it would not necesary be a ticket for a future success. In an interview wih Newsweek published this week, Dalai Lama said that "we don't talk about the past. We are looking to the future" when asked about his relationship with Beijing, recalling about meeting with Chinese leaders in the past for being reminded that Tibet has been part of China for centuries and being requested to state for no separation guarantee.

Do something. For the better future.

The 3am Decision Case

It's 3am. The children are safe and asleep. The phone is ringing in the White House. Something is happening in the world. Who do you want answering the phone ? Sound familiar? Yeah, it's the famous '3am Hillary phone call' ad campaign for the Democrat's presidential nomination. The answer is supposed to be clear: it's Hillary Clinton who already knows the world leaders, knows the military, someone tested to lead in the dangerous world.

Barack Obama was quick to response in a speech countering the experience Hillary is portraying. The question is not about who's picking up the phone. The question is what kind of judgement that you excercise when picking up the phone. By now, there are a few hundreds parodies written with regard to this 3am phone call. Some jokingly questioned why Hillary was dressed up with make-up at 3am?. And oddly enough, one of the kids sleeping in the bed is grown up now, a young lady named Casey Knowles that support Obama! What a joke.

Anyhow, making a critical decision at 3am must be very tough, let alone dealing with world affairs of urgent matters that might have long lasting impacts. It takes both proven experience
and good judgement to deal with it. In smaller scale, the same token shall apply to the business and corporate matters. We see many great leaders sucessfully grow the business and prosper the people within the business and the community. Yet, many good leader failed.

Coming up with sound decisions, timely and well considered, are sometime quite a challenge in day-to-day business operations. In one extreme, there are managers that often go making impulsive decisions, anything as long as it's good for him/her or his/her divsion, caring less that it might have impacts to others. In other extreme, we have managers that are not comfortable making important decision, let alone tough ones. Years back, I was curious as not being able to invite some managers in our important meetings. It turned out that it was not because they were so busy with other more important stuffs, but it's more that they did not want to end up in a situation at the meeting that they had to make (key) decisions!. It's ironic that they were expensive because they were supposed to make (tough) decisions in the first place.

Personal background and cultural-social environment have for sure some contributing factors in decision making process. More importantly, we could observe that we most of the time do not prepare our people in systematic ways to assume business leadership. We shall start with the new recruits. We have spent extra efforts to bring in the best fresh graduates. We then need an established program to grow them in their early career years. Yes, there are some good management trainee programs in some companies. Yet, it only for few selected people. The majority comes in thru regular pipe. Some have programs to widen their horizon within the first 3-4 career years. They would need to be rotated to gain technical experience, oriented to have business exposures, and got in touch with management awareness as to how the whole things get integrated and moving.

Key element missing in such porgram as I observe is the exposure to making business decisions. It's worth the efforts for them undergoing a systematic program in a way that would be confronted to make a real decision as we prepare them to become future leaders. Let them go thru case by case and learn first to have the courage to decide and then make well-considered decisions. Good ones and bad ones, and later on try to deal with a '3am situation'.

In recent recruitment interview with a number of candiates graduated from best schools with excellent GPA, I posed a question of 'what is the biggest and toughest decisions you've ever made in your life' ?. I virtually ended up staring at blank faces, with some managed to refer to few daily routines. It's imperative that we have to train our guys to get used to making tough choices - with well-thought consideration, understanding the impact to overall business, putting aside any super-ego and emotional attachment. Although, good decisions do not automatically yield good or best results as there are some unknown factors usually involved. But, statistically, decisions made with good processes and apropriate tools would in general make a good outcome that can responsibly be accounted for. With it, we could hope to have good leaders in the future that intelectually mature enough to make decisions that might impact the lives of many people. Proven experience and good judgement. When you become powerful leader, you'd better need it.

Advice from Spiderman passed on from Uncle Ben to all of us, especially to Obama, Clinton, and McCain, with great power comes great responsibilty. Use it very, very wisely.

Generation W2: Collective Intelligence at Work

Business IT Forum, March 3-6, 2008, San Ramon, California. This was an annual gathering of business-IT leaders within one of super-major oil companies that I was attending. Social computing was one of the topics addressed during this 3-day session. It was quite coincidently surprising and personally entertaining as a week before I managed to post Social Networking and Balance of Power to this blog. Listening to speakers in a break-out session and technology trend keynote, it's a bit deja vu, connecting dots back about 4-year ago my conversation with a good friend of mine. Andy Eyschen has been an independent consultant working and travelling around the globe and often dropped by at my office when he is in town. We're discussing about knowledge management, learning that it was not about knowledge database that mostly matter. It was connecting the subject matter experts that would really be the name of the game.

Back to the future, I could not be able to resist thinking that it's in a way transforming into or surfacing as what we see today as the phenomena of social networking. Or in broader and more general context, social computing. The wall of hierarchy is falling down for the sake of more collaboration and sharing, connect thru on-line networks with each node (user, people) able to be a subject active contributor rather than an object passive reader. It is not a fad. Nor is it something that will pass you or your company by. Forrester Research articulated that gradually, social computing will impact almost every role, at every kind of company, in all parts of the world... Big names like Microsoft and IBM have established research groups dedicating to social computing.

Wikis, blogs, "walls" on people-connect tools, and the like establish a paradigm shift to user-generated content, trusting users as participants or co-developers. Millions and millions of people do write, post, interact, share and refine on topics of interest to them - no money involved (well, not the first and foremost, as to some extent and forms, you might "invite" commercial ads), it's just out of curiosity, enthusiasm, and feeling good to contribute. The result ? collective intelligence is being embraced and well established. Here is the example of the work of many collaborating in Wikipedia formulating social computing :

In the weaker sense of the term, social computing has to do with supporting any sort of social behavior in or through computational systems. It is based on creating or recreating social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. Thus, blogs, email, instant messaging, social network services, wikis, social bookmarking and other instances of what is often called social software illustrate ideas from social computing, but also auction software and other kinds of electronic market or electronic negotiation platforms where people interact socia

And what the hell is Web 2.0 ? Don't get it wrong. It is not a product. Nor it is a software release. It is a second generation of internet technoligies that pave ways for social computing. The concept of "Web 2.0" began with a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International in 2004. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use webs. According to Tim O'Reilly (founder of O'Reilly Media and supporter of the free software and open source movements) on clarifying What is Web 2.0, there's still a huge amount of disagreement about just what Web 2.0 means, with some people decrying it as a meaningless marketing buzzword, and others accepting it as the new conventional wisdom. He formulated the initial brainstroming with some examples below:

Web 1.0 ------------- Web 2.0
DoubleClick --------> Google AdSense
mp3.com -----------> Napster
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
personal websites --> blogging
publishing ---------> participation

Got it ? No ? A high-level executive addressing the Business IT Forum mentioned above started his speech by mentioning about social networking that his kids are coversant in playing around and said jokingly that he/we might be dynosaurs by now. So watch out. A new generation is born! Generation W2 - social interaction growing on top of Web 2.0 foundation. Unlike with many notion of generations before, it is not bound by age nor time-stamp (date) when those people are born at the same period. It is a network of community that has the energy and enthusiasm to embrace collaboration and sharing, across boundaries of age, geography, and hierarchy.

Again, a collective intelligence, a global brain. Be part of it or be virtually isolated in Jurassic Park!