Leaders's Digest #03 - 1 Mar 2018

LEADERS ISSUE 03

DIGEST

1 MARCH 2018

E C N A L M A R N O O F I R T PE SA I N A G OR + T N E M E D G R A A N C A E M SCOR

HOW DO YOU CHANGE ‘INSIDE OUT’?

HOW IS DATA RELATED TO YOUR COMPANY’S BOTTOM LINE?

PG. 8

The Marriage Between Strategic HR Management and Business Performance

PG. 10

Are stretch goals for all employees the best strategy to measure and reward performance in our open source era?

Content Partner

PG. 12

Leaders Think Different This fortnightly publication is dedicated to advancing civil service leadership and putting it into practice contemporary leadership principles.

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PUBLICATION TEAM EDITORIAL

Editor-in-Chief Segaren Senior Editor Siti Rahanah Amat Dollah Assistant Editor Samson Tan Graphic Designer Awang Ismail bin Awang Hambali Abdul Rani Haji Adenan

CONTENTS

ISSUE 3 I 1 MARCH 2018

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How do you change ‘Inside Out’?

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How is data related to your company’s bottom line

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The Marriage Between Strategic HR Management and Business Performance

10

Are stretch goals for all employees the best strategy to measure and reward performance in our open source era?

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Leader’s Think Different

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Inspirational Quotes

THE LEADER’S DIGEST IS A FORTNIGHTLY PUBLICATION BY LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE OF SARAWAK CIVIL SERVICE FEATURING ALL THE LATEST SURROUNDING THE TOPIC OF LEADERSHIP. THE PUBLICATION ALSO FEATURES SPECIALLY SELECTED WRITE-UPS RELATED TO EACH THEME OF THE ISSUE, THROUGH ITS CONTENT PARTNERS.

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How Do You Change ‘Inside Out’?

The pace of change is increasing and there

‘Ingredients’ for change are within your organisation

is a human cost to it.

BY RUPA SIVANOLI

At a leadership sharing session recently, some senior managers lamented that there is a general sense of fatigue and exhaustion setting in with their teams as a result of unrelenting change being thrust upon them.

I strongly believe that the competency to drive change is an essential requirement for all who call themselves managers. Many times, we take the view that driving change equals to ability to influence and make inspiring speeches. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

This is an all too familiar feeling that most people have when there seems to be no end in sight when organisations launch one initiative after another in the name of being the best and outdoing the competition. It’s all well and good to turn up the pressure and work hard to keep the results favourable but at what cost?

CHANGE MANAGEMENT SHOULD BE PART OF EVERY MANAGER’S PLAYBOOK

Human beings are not designed to remain motivated when there is a sense of disconnect from the purpose of the change. Our reserves run dry and inevitably we “check out” emotionally.

Luckily for us, in spite of what is happening emotionally, our physical selves can still show up for work and pretend that everything is okay. But, who are we kidding? Studies have indicated that when this happens, productivity, engagement and ownership drops. This is not an outcome anyone wants.

I recently binge watched the TV series Billions, which is about the lives of hedge fund managers in extremely volatile work situations. There is a character called Wendy Rhoades, who is a performance coach to these fund managers and her in-house role is to help them overcome mental blocks.

Through insightful conversations, she gets them out of their rut and sends them back to their trading activities with renewed vigour to take on the world.

Wouldn’t it be great if we all had a Wendy Rhoades across the corridor when we lack motivation or have doubts about challenges brought about by organisational changes we are going through?

Alternatively, we could also look at the idea of setting up the function and services of change management in-house so that we can anticipate and plan for change that doesn’t impact employees so badly.

If change management is defined as the ability to anticipate, adapt actions and prepare employees to work productively through a transition, then surely it is every manager’s responsibility to know and execute the steps towards this.

Yet, if you ask most managers “have you ever been trained or exposed to change management methodology or tools”, you are more likely to deal with a look of confusion than confidence.

So what exactly does a manager need to be aware of? Managing change is like baking a cake, you need a few essential ingredients to come together at the right time before seeing results.

These ingredients are the link to the big picture (vision). You also need a good business reason (business case and benefit), transformational leadership, communication, excellent management of the organisation’s supporting system and the ability to align all these to the intended vision.

Business Case Clear Comms

Shared Vision

Lasting Change Performance Measures

Leadership Commitment Employee Involvement

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Even with these ingredients in place, we have heard and seen cases of transformation efforts going down the drain. At times, this is predominantly due to a missing link. For example if there is no leadership – there is no forward momentum; if the rational or business case does not answer the question of “what’s in it for me”, people will lack motivation to change; and most importantly if the vision is not well articulated, there will be confusion as to having reached the point of success.

In his book The Heart of Change, John P. Kotter says the core of the matter is always about changing the behaviour of people and this happens when leaders “speak to” people’s feelings.

He shares a story of an organisation that embarked on becoming a low-cost producer and did all the right things to drive change yet maintained an elaborate executive area.

People would talk about being able to play basketball in the chairman’s office and that there were enough polished wood in the executive floor to build a very nice ship.

Needless to say, this change was not realised until two years after the plan date, when a new chief executive officer took over and he literally tore down the entire floor and put up a layout that reflects a cost conscious organisation.

As I see it, when driving change, it is important to align your actions to your end goal and persevere to execute it in the best possible way.

Closer to home, if any of you have been to Melaka recently, you will be pleasantly surprised by how clean it is, especially the Melaka River itself. Driving in, you see sign boards saying “Don’t Mess With Melaka”.

Initially I thought it was an oversight, because it doesn’t sound very friendly to greet visitors this way, right? Then I realised this was a campaign launched a few years ago by the Chief Minister for locals (not tourists) to keep the city clean.

Under his leadership and attention to cleanliness, the city transformed over a period of one year – a good example of aligning intent and actions to drive positive change.

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Human beings are not designed to remain motivated when there is a sense of disconnect from the purpose of the change. Our reserves run dry and inevitably we “check out” emotionally.

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STARTING THE ENGINE IN DRIVING ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE Typically, an organisation is faced with a trigger to change, be it an opportunity to grow through acquisition, loss of market share or creeping costs, this forces a response at an operational level.

It may mean many things: upgrading of IT systems, setting up of a shared service centre for more efficient backroom processing, harmonising of employee terms and conditions or introduction of balanced scorecard among other actions.

The main idea is to look at the desired outcome and map out your actions to ensure that the people in your team are geared up towards the new way of working.

This can be achieved in five to six steps, and these steps are not too different from one expert to another. Basically, you need to: 1. Increase urgency, state the implication of not changing and drive the urgency.

2. Set up a guiding team – a team of people ready to help you coordinate and execute the various activities to come.

3. Get the vision right, this is not about the organisation’s vision but the vision of a change initiative that is completed. Know what describe it in terms of the physical world, document world and digital world. If there are significant gaps in either of these worlds, close it through training, testing and support from those who know how.

4. Communicate for buy-in especially to the groups who you need to see behavioural or competency changes from.

5. Empower action and follow through to check understanding and alignment.

6. Make change stick. Make it your culture, pay attention and reward the right behaviours, otherwise there will be regression.

There is a sequence and a sense of timing for all these actions and you ought to be mindful of operational realities such as yearend closing or plant shut downs as big events can take people’s attention away.

DRIVING CHANGE FROM WITHIN HAS ADVANTAGES In the 80’s and 90’s the nature of work was more predictable and you could plan for changes as time was not as compressed as today.

So managing change was viewed as a one off or more ad-hoc activity. Given this luxury of time and affordability, organisations would put a tender out and buy consulting resources to deliver change management solutions.

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Other than to keep up with the speed to execute change today, the approach of looking outside for change management solutions, has its drawbacks. The two obvious disadvantages are in sustaining the change and the lack of contextual information when executing the change.

1. Keeping it sustainable This requires effort to ensure that the final outcome of the change effort say, an ERP (enterprise resource planning) or system implementation, is fully reflected at the workplace, with team and individual KPI’s, development targets and career progression all aligned to this initiative.

2. Lack of contextual information Change really is situational, it starts with a deep understanding of the terrain (i.e. your people, culture). If you know your people, their appetite to learn new things or their likelihood to resist an idea or perhaps the person pushing the idea, you are in a better position to plan and influence outcomes.

Also, driving change from within gives you the advantage of having insights of past failures and future plans so you know what to avoid and what to leverage on, without spending too much time before hitting the ground.

At the end of the day, real change does not happen at roadshows or in classroom training sessions, it happens because someone believes in what you say, and is willing to trust you. And this, in a Malaysian context is more likely to happen, at a mamak stall, over nasi lemak and teh tarik.

Let me share an example, a few years back when I was implementing change in South Korea (pulling out transaction processing and placing in Malaysia), my colleagues there indicated that there were three union representatives who could spell trouble, so we had to do the groundwork and prepare the managing director and head of HR to have a few off-line discussions, karaoke sessions and such, until trust was established and both sides were on the same page.

Thirdly, inject change skills to this team (business partnering, employee engagement, influencing) and allow them to experiment and drive change for smaller projects but with strong leadership support.

As a one off initial investment, perhaps get external help to get a proven set of tools for diagnostic and execution purposes.

A good change management practitioner is someone who is curious and inquisitive by nature and is able to relate to others and see things in their point of view.

With this, you are able to learn from the process of IT experts who have designed the change (architects), but often they speak in a technical language, so you need to play the role of “translator” and break it down to the language of ordinary business scenarios to engage impacted employees more effectively.

In my experience, this is the hardest bit and yet it is the most rewarding.

The other thing I’d like to add is that there are times that change management initiatives are not well understood as you start to undertake activities such as impact assessments, pulse surveys, etc.

So you need to do your groundwork and get support from the various levels in your organisation so that you can execute more effectively.

While setting up an in-house change management team is relatively new, quite a few Malaysian organisations are already taking the lead in this space.

Clearly, they see the need and are reaping the rewards. As the poem by Robert Frost says, take the road less travelled and it will make all the difference.

Only once this was achieved, did we go ahead with the roadshows and the final stages of implementation.

SETTING UP A CHANGE MANAGEMENT TEAM IN-HOUSE Secondly, it’s important to leverage on the team’s existing skillset and experiences and look to place them closer to the higher management for hierarchal reporting. Setting up of the team should come from a process background (impact of change), communicators (engagement) and human resources (implications to employee welfare, terms and conditions of service and the concept of internal equity).

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How Is Data Related To Your Company’s Bottom Line?

BY PRETHIBA ESVARY

PEOPLE ANALYTICS CAN DRIVE IMPRESSIVE BUSINESS RESULTS

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO BUSINESSES?

“It is suicidal for any HR director to stand in front of the board and say, ‘I’m going to increase staff cost.’

“So, we looked at the data. One key performance indicator (KPI) which is a favourite one for HR; number of days of training, which, if it is the only indicator in the balanced scorecard, becomes a behavioural and business risk. See, if this measure is on its own with no other KPIs that are supportive, it is very dangerous.

“It was seven days per year per staff and that was it, and it was tied to a balanced scorecard that was tied very, very tightly with bonus.”

The above is an insight by Nora Abd Manaf, group chief human capital officer of Maybank, in a September 2015 CIPD research report.

People analytics in HR is the use of data to derive relevant information and insights to be used for workforce planning, talent management and operational improvement.

The role of HR today has become one of leadership and strategy, which means they now work closely with top management and board members.

So, in order to secure buy-ins for particular projects, HR professionals would not only need to know people analytics, but also understand how to connect the dots between relevant data and business results, and present it in a compelling manner.

Aresandiran Jaganatha Naidu, the Malaysian Institute of Human Resource Management (MIHRM) president said that while Malaysia is beginning to see an upward trend in the implementation of people analytics, it is still limited to multinational and large organisations.

Aresandiran said, “About 60% of operations cost is related to people management, and it has been shown by international organisations like Google and many large companies in Malaysia, that analytics performed in the area of people management in relation to business, will certainly help management to make more informed and pragmatic business decisions.”

Other organisations such as small and medium enteprises (SMEs) and public corporations, either don’t see an urgent need of its application, lack an awareness of its relevance to business strategy, or are sceptical about investing into HR professionals’ upskilling or reskilling.

People are the most important asset of any organisation. So, it has become more crucial than ever to understand how investing in people gives businesses a high return. Aresandiran gave an example: “We need to know what is the revenue per employee, profit per employee, and salary increase vs revenue increase.”

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HOW DOES IT DRIVE BUSINESS RESULTS?

5. Makes a connection between performance and targets set

1. Creates strategic workforce plans

Experian, an information services group that helps individuals and business make smart financial decisions, employs a HR balanced scorecard approach.

Due to the pace at which Facebook is growing, workforce planning has become the main priority for HR. Ross Sparkman, global head of workforce planning at Facebook had said that his team would gather data on people, productivity and performance to determine “which roles would cause the business to stop making money if they stopped showing up.”

This information would then be used in the company’s recruitment and retention strategies, to specify current demand for critical positions and to forecast future changes. They do this monthly or quarterly as change happens so often.

2. Creates a great culture When Google wanted to determine the level of necessity for managers, they conducted Project Oxygen. The People Operations (HR) team looked at performance ratings and upward feedback of managers and compared these against employee productivity.

From the data, they discovered a positive correlation between good managers and employee productivity.

Following this, the team conducted more in-depth research (analysing survey comments, conducting interviews, etc.) to identify characteristics of a great manager. From there, they devised a guidebook on the top eight management behaviours as a basis for selection and training of managers. This was how Google worked towards improving their work culture.

3. Allows you to examine workforce issues Richemont Group, a luxury goods company, studied their turnover patterns by gathering quantitative and qualitative data across the different countries, categories and brands they work with. This included observations or discussions, or both, with front-line employees to gather intelligence.

“From there, we built a correlation to justify the data, so we know where we should spend more of our efforts to make jobs easier and enhance productivity,” said Lawrence Hung, who was formerly attached with the company, in the 2015 CIPD report.

Business leaders would receive quarterly performance reports that indicate how employees are meeting objectives outlined in the scorecard, which would then encourage conversations between employees and leaders.

“From a HR perspective, the scorecard helps us as a HR function to think about how we are adding value to the business priorities – for example, how are we going to contribute towards improved pipeline ratios?” a source from Experian said in the same CIPD report.

WHAT CAN WE DO? The CIPD report on the evolution of HR analytics in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia, revealed HR is held back in the people analytics space due to a lack of investment into people and technology, and constraints in leadership understanding, standardisation of HR measures, HR maturity and skills gap. Here’s how we can address them: 1. Bring in new analytics talent (from various functions and disciplines) and establish mentoring and cross-functional relationships.

2. Work with professionals in different departments internally and also externally with industry peers to establish standard measures and to define high-value metrics. As this is a relatively new space, it is crucial to benchmark metrics and good practices.

3. Use evidence-based HR projects to attain buy-in from senior leaders for HR investments. These projects should be of high value to the overall business and should be communicated in a compelling manner.

4. Upskill or reskill HR professionals at all levels, and ensure a strong working relationship with business units.

4. Permits you to gain buy-ins from leaders

Source: Sept 2015 CIPD report

When leaders challenge your assumptions, data can back you up.

Hung said, “I use data-driven insights to state the past, present and predict the future, and why I need that much resources, name, head counts, dollar signs or equipment.

“We also look for areas of improvement because we have so many brands in the group. So, how can we know that a particular activity or initiative is more effective in one brand but not for the other brand?” he added.

CONCLUSION The examples above demonstrate clear evidence of how much success people analytics is able to bring to an organisation.

While it may be tough at the start, especially with regards to addressing skills gap, Aresandiran said this can be resolved through collaboration and knowledge transfer among HR professionals.

“This is crucial to ensure the right and successful approaches are designed and applied, especially within the Malaysian context,” he added.

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The Marriage Between Strategic HR Management and Business Performance

BY LOO LEAP HAN

The journey to everlasting love...

A very common scenario most managers encounter day in, day out is this: “Another resignation? What’s going on? I need people to run this organisation.

Anything wrong with our HR (human resources)?

Please get the HR manager to look into it immediately.

I need to show figures to our shareholders. Time is money.”

HR REALITY CHECK Looking into the different social demographics and practical realities, at present, I find that there is no distinct style of HRM practice that can be clearly identified as a one-stop “HRM solution” to people management and business success.

Every problem is a HR problem. And I believe all HR managers are trying their very best to overcome and meet the business leader’s expectations. I, myself, am no exception to it.

Firms employing strategic HRM practices that are internally consistent, strategically aligned and compatible with business strategies are believed to result in superior performance.

One of my key HR performance target is to design a strategic HR management (HRM) system that strikes a balance between the organisation, employer and employee, which will then enhance business performance. It’s a huge expectation, and sometimes I wonder if it’s achievable.

Few questions came to my mind. How it is to be structured? What do we include in designing HR processes/practices? How can HR services be delivered to meet the leader’s expectations?

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It is increasingly acknowledged that human capital is a valuable resource for business success and a source of competitive advantage.

Thus, to properly evaluate the effects of strategic HRM practices on business performance, it is vital to capture these interactive effects by treating an organisation’s strategic HRM practices as a holistic system.

By doing so, the role of strategic HRM in maximising its performance will become increasingly important, challenging and cost effective to most organisations.

However, the designing of effective strategic HRM practices is a complicated task. There is little consensus among HR practitioners as to what constitutes “best practice” in such a system.

In reality, till today, there is no single agreed, or fixed list of strategic HRM practices or systems that are used to define or measure HRM effectiveness.

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STRATEGIES TO COUNTER CHALLENGES Globalisation, competition and mobilisation of talents have given great challenges to most HR practitioners in determining the most effective combination set of strategic HRM practices that will lead to greater business performance.

WHAT NOW? It is clearly time for a quantum leap in the HR field, and HR practitioners can support these transitions by showing strong HR leadership, HR future-oriented thinking, flexibility and creativity of strategic HRM practices, and delivering HR value in tomorrow’s organisations.

The ideal composition of strategic HRM practices must meet the following criteria in order to support business performance and achieve competitive advantage:

Is the HR profession moving fast enough to acquire such roles?

Yes. Business leaders recognise the “people are important and business needs people” notion. Therefore, business leaders give much attention to HRM knowing that HR department represents the discovery of people and is an integral part of the organisation value chain.

1. These practices must complement each other.

2. These practices must be cost effective, and resources must be available in the organisation.

3. The design of strategic HRM system must be aligned with the organisational mission, vision and culture.

The business leaders have considerably emphasise on the importance of integrating strategic HRM practices and business strategy for cost reduction, innovation, and quality enhancement that lead to business sustainability and success.

It is likely that senior management team recognises the business leaders’ HR philosophy and the importance of strategic HRM practices. However, many ignore the implementation of these practices due to constraint of resources and talent to execute them.

While acknowledging that these practices serve as a valuecreating function on business performance, there are issues still unresolved on how we treat strategic HRM–performance link and how the two are paired.

The big question is how HR practitioner counteract this dilemma?

Can the ‘marriage’ between strategic HRM and performance be realised? Will the marriage last? This is a quest to all HR practitioners out there to solve this mystery.

Such recognition has defined what the future holds for HR field, in terms of HR professional competencies and HRM philosophy and values can bring to the organisation.

PARTING THOUGHTS I can very much conclude that a proper

employment of strategic HRM practices will be helpful and useful to improving business performance.

It is thus crucial for the HR manager to remain committed to the development of effective strategic HRM systems by focusing on the implementation of configuration of these practices within the firm’s resources.

Senior management team also needs to assume responsibility of the increasing array of available practices that are essential to make better HR business decisions.

In order to achieve the desired blend of a happy marriage between strategic HRM and business performance, the relationship has to be sincere, unique, personal, and romantic for the ‘couple’ to achieve everlasting love.

In my personal view, HR practitioners need to understand the role of strategic HRM practices in the organisation and its link with business performance. By doing so, HR practitioners can design strategic intervention that will bring closer collaboration and better HR knowledge sharing among members of the organisation.

Besides meeting organisational goals, the main role of strategic HRM is also to serve employees, their team, their department, and their organisation to perform better.

That means HR practitioners must ensure that there is a direct connection between the strategic HRM policies, practices and services in meeting the business needs.

Loo is group HR manager at Beacon International Specialist Centre.

He has great passion on employee engagement, talent spotlight, HR intervention programme and people development subject matters.

HR department should champion superior performance philosophy. Instead of helping and serving employees, HR should be developing, supporting, empowering, engaging, encouraging, and enabling employees.

By doing so, HR department will earn a “seat” at the table and be a strategic partner to business planning and growth.

Apart from that, HR department must also drive HR initiatives that are aligned with other general strategies in the organisation that is feasible in attaining the business goals.

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ARE STRETCH GOALS FOR ALL EMPLOYEES THE BEST STRATEGY TO MEASURE AND REWARD PERFORMANCE IN OUR

OPEN SOURCE ERA?

BY RAJEEV PESHAWARIA

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Times are changing. In the current open source era, people are now empowered to opt for free agency rather than traditional fulltime employment. In our digital gig economy, where knowledge is free and abundant, does traditional thinking still work?

Specifically, how does one motivate and reward performance? Should all employees still be given stretch goals?

Perhaps it’s time to empower employees instead and turn them into entrepreneurs who will stretch themselves according to their respective individual goals and circumstances. Because assuming every employee has the ability to achieve stretch goals sets both the individual and the organisation up for failure. By setting minimum rather than stretch goals for all employees, people are empowered to self-manage, freeing them up to decide how much they want to be rewarded, liberating managers from the burden of motivating their employees.

In the open source era, rewards may no longer be solely financial for some, but may tend also toward fulfillment of a better work-life balance. The point is that if employers can empower employees so that they are able to choose their main purpose and how much reward they are after, they will then have the freedom to choose when and by how much they want to stretch, if at all.

In today’s world, different people have different life goals. And that’s okay. Not everyone needs to stretch themselves all the time, and those who choose not to due to individual circumstance and capacity, are not necessarily bad performers. They have simply chosen to do less at a particular time in their career.

The prospect of setting minimum rather than stretch goals may be daunting to most employers, who fear this may spell doom for the enterprise. But traditional research actually backs this up. The bell curve theory actually proves that, time and again, only 20% of all employees will be top performers, with the majority 60% being average. What this also means is that there will always be that remaining 20% at the bottom of the bell curve. What this does not mean is that these employees are bad performers or failures.

Companies like GE are already discovering that, counter-intuitively, employee motivation and productivity actually increase rather than decrease when the onus of enabling performance is placed upon employees themselves. So the truth is that with or without a system involving stretch goals, performance will distribute itself along the 20:60:20 curve anyway.

By acknowledging this, you set the right expectations and let people contribute as much as they want, without stress or stigma. And it is this kind of freedom that actually begets success, for it liberates employees to perform at their best, thinking and acting as owners.

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LEADERS THINK DIFFERENT

BY DR. HO CHYE KOK

When everybody thinks alike, everyone is likely to be wrong (Humphrey Neil, 1954)

According to Dewey (1910), thinking signifies everything that goes in our heads or that goes through our minds. To think of something that comes to mind is to be conscious of it in any way whatsoever. We think of things that we do not directly see, hear, smell or taste. Thinking implies the entrance of an idea into one’s mind with or without deliberate consideration or reflection. For Dewey, daydreaming, or building of castles in the air, in a random sense, is thinking.

Being human, we think, and we reflect. To reflect on our thinking is to seek for the basis of a belief and to examine the belief. Is our world flat, or do black swans exist? Reflective thinking allows us to acquire definite meanings to enhance our understanding of the unknown and to achieve superior performance.

We acquire meanings and understanding through actionable activities.

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In the context of this discussion, thinking differently is anchored in the following: • How much do we understand a problem that confronts us?

We think of critical incidents and the crucial decisions we take to provide actionable solutions. Where volatility, as driven by quantum computing and Internet connectivity are morphing the digital landscape at warp speed, the complexities of a problem intensifies. Can we still have the perspective on the big picture to focus on problems and solutions without disruptive intrusions and digital distractions?

• How well can we anticipate the consequences of our actions?

We may be unclear of the present situation. We may lack clarity on the purpose and the meaning of the present. Often, we are in a confused state of mind, before we obtain clarity. There are uncertainties and ambiguities in the future of work. Can we predict the consequences of our actions?

Can we think to think? The 3C (Creatively, Critically, Collaboratively) organisation thinking in action framework, as depicted in the Venn Diagram, is pertinent in influencing our cognitive behaviours to deliver superior performance. Analytics overlaps Creative and Critical Thinking; Groupthink intersects between Creative and Collaborative Thinking, and the connection between Critical and Collaborative Thinking defines Brainstorming. The 3C organisation thinking in action framework energise leaders to think integrative and to think holistically.

Predictive analytics and Big Data are vital competencies in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things’ world of future work. Future-proof leaders are returning to schools to acquire computational techniques to think analytically and holistically. While we engage in rules-based development training on thinking, we may unwittingly outsource our thinking to mobile applications on our smart devices, and our memories to the cloud.

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decisions is that so is everyone else. We spend too much time striving for perfect solutions before we actually do something. It is better to regret what we have done than what we haven’t. Think different allow us to respond to solutions that we would not have otherwise thought of.

Think different with reverse brainstorming. In a collectivist culture, the process of brainstorming divergence and convergence of ideas is less effective. Collaborative thinking does not work in cultures where obedience and compliance is an individual habit and a way of life. Productive dialogues are mostly muted in highpower distance communities. In the East Asian context, followers are seen and not heard, specifically in tall hierarchical work settings. Groups do not think. Instead of trying to find a solution to a problem for example in classical brainstorming, it may be purposeful to find ways that cause the problem or aggravate the problem to make it worse. In reverse brainstorming, we mess things up. Such thinking process highlights assumptions and weaknesses. Reverse brainstorming may serendipitously reveal intended solutions are critical factors that are causing problems.

COLLABORATIVELY

CREATIVELY

CRITICALLY

The 3C model of organisation thinking in action In the Geography of Thoughts, Richard Nisbett (2003) argues why East Asians and Westerners think differently. We think differently because of differing ecologies; social structures; philosophies; and education. He comments that East Asians think holistically and Westerners focus on analytics. For Nisbett, the characteristic thought processes of different groups differ greatly. The next question we need to ask is: Is culture hard-wired to our brains?

Leaders think different. To think different, we need to challenge our perspectives of life in the digital space, the future of work and worldview of smart cities. If we work like robots, we will be replaced by robots. Artificially intelligence algorithms will either complement or replace what we do, until we think different. Arden (2006) espoused that whatever we think, we think the opposite.

There are benefits in making wrong decisions. For Arden, it is not because we are making the wrong decisions, it is because we are making the right ones. We are trapped into making sensible decisions based on predictive analytics and big data that are presented to us as it happen. The problem with making sensible

According to Neill (1954) the contrary way of thinking takes the pressure off mass opinion. Neill believed that if we follow the growing fascinations of the crowd, and then ruminate and reflect on opposing, contrary perspectives, that could develop our thinking more fully and independently – that we become more creative, get closer to a sense of truth, and have a better understanding of the larger forces operating on us and our positions within the world (Vanech 2010). When everybody thinks alike, everyone is likely to be wrong. For Neill, it pays to be contrary.

Applying the art of contrary thinking may allow us to understand a problem that confronts us more fully. Importantly, we may predict the consequences of our actions. Think different by thinking contrarily is a matter of getting into the habit of looking at both sides of all questions and determining which are likely to be the critical solutions that lead to making crucial decisions for superior performance and success.

As smart machines continue to think rules-based with predictive analytics algorithms and big data generating at quantum speed in the clouds, leaders think different. Leaders think contrarily; emotionally embodied in diverse human experience and conventional wisdom. After all, how is an egg cracked? I ponder.

Dr. Ho Chye Kok is a senior academic at the Faculty of Business, Design and Arts, Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak. He is contactable at ckho@cantab.net.

References Arden (2006), Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite, Penguin: NY Dewey (1910), How We Think, Boston: D. C. Heath Neill (1954), The Art of Contrary Thinking, Idaho: Caxton Press Nisbett (2004), The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why, NY: The Free Press

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The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.

- Helen Keller -

I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’

- Muhammad Ali -

Inspirational Quotes If you believe in yourself and have dedication and pride - and never quit, you’ll be a winner. The price of victory is high but so are the rewards.

Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

- Paul Bryant -

- Francis of Assisi -

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Issue 3 I March 2018

LEADERS

DIGEST

Jokes

Issue 3 I March 2018

15

BUILDING LEADERS OF EXCELLENCE Proposed new campus facility for Leadership Institute of Sarawak Civil Service at Rampangi, Santubong

LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE OF SARAWAK CIVIL SERVICE KM20, JALAN KUCHING SERIAN, SEMENGGOK, 93250 KUCHING, SARAWAK. TELEPHONE : +6082-625166 FAX : +6082-625966 E-mail : info@leadinstitute.com.my