The Four-Stage Strategy (of dodging the bullet)

 There was an old British sitcom in 1980s titled Yes Prime Minister in which one of its episodes ‘A Victory for Democracy’, introduced what was called “The Four Stage Strategy”. That was the outline of the standard advice response given in the time of crisis. As much political satire as it can be, those strategies were eerily prescient about all manners of things.

Subconsciously in life, we all are obediently adopting “the four-stage strategy (of dodging a bullet)”, just like a guideline.

Before going further with the explanation, here is what “The Four Strategy” about:

In Stage 1, we said, “Nothing is going to happen”

In Stage 2, we said, “Something maybe is going to happen, but we should do nothing about it”

In Stage 3, we said, “Maybe we should do something about it but there is nothing we * can * do”

In Stage 4 , we said, “Maybe there was something we could have done, but it is too late now”

Every single problem that we are facing in life, always start small. It never came big at first. The size happened to be big because of the snowball effect, and by then you get overwhelmed by it and can only hope you don’t get crushed under it.

Stage 1. “Nothing is going to happen”

This is the point where the problem just occurs, and it is not that big to catch your attention. People tend to think that it will pass by itself just like the other problems previously and didn’t really think of it too much.

Let me give you 2 sets of examples from different backgrounds for you to be able to get into it quickly and you can choose which one applies to your situation best.

Life Example:

               You smell gas at your home, but you’re in a hurry to go out for your appointment. You left home without checking your gas, thinking, “It might be someone burning something in their backyard. Nothing is going to happen”

 

Work Example:

               An employee suddenly did not perform as well as he did previously after his proposal was rejected by his leader. Without giving him enough feedback to reflect on his mistake and build his potential, the leader demands of him to keep on performing well. No one notices anything is wrong with that situation, thinking, “Everyone has been through the same. Nothing is going to happen”

What can be done? It seemed simple and trivial, right? Yet sometimes this unseen problem can be a bigger thing.

In life example, it would not hurt to check your gas for even just a minute, just in case, it is leaking. Or perhaps it may be your neighbor. But it will definitely prevent bad things to happen either at your place or your neighborhood.

In work example, the leader of that employee could’ve given the reason for rejecting his proposal and try to guide his team member by giving him some advice so that the employee can gain confidentiality of himself and he can deliver more. Also, perhaps when the employee showed a bit of troubled face, the counseling team (usually HR or professional counselor or secretary, etc) can go and reach him out to show that the company also care not only about the profit but the mental health of their employee. It may sound impractical and idealistic, but this is also only an example.

Stage 2. “Something maybe is going to happen, but we should do nothing about it”

At this point, you may already know something is wrong but you still think someone will handle the problem for you, or that it still will pass by itself.

Life Example:

               You knew your neighbor has the habit of burning their trashes, no matter what season it was. Yet this time is the summer where there was no rain for months, and yet the burning smell was different from the usual. You left home without checking what caused it because you thought that your neighbor is still watching the fire, “It is the driest summer and the neighbor knows better to watch the fire”

 

Work Example:

               The high-achiever employee has flunked through the evaluation and became one of underperforming employee for some period. Sometimes during working hour, he went unnoticed for a long time without any of the team members knowing. Some thought he was on a meeting, some does not pay any attention at all to him that they didn’t even notice him gone for a long time, basically no one knows where he is. The behavior of that employee was noticed by a promising newcomer in the company, which thought that it was the company ‘culture’ while deciding to see what the company will do to him.

Now you may see that there * is * a potential of problem arises on both cases, yet what can be done? Still looking not bad, right? You still think that it is alright to let things goes on just like it is, right? But how do you know that it will not become a bigger problem if you do not try to look at it and analyze it. Perhaps it won’t need a solution, but perhaps it shows the potential of an outbreak.

In life example, despite knowing the neighbor habit, you can try alerting the people at your home before going to watch things. Or you can try looking at what kind of change-making the difference at that time. Or even making your own prevention by making sure your yard was not easily catching fire.

In work example, the problematic employee could have been warned by his leader for not doing the normal like their peers. It will be a different case if he was in a meeting and his agenda was open for everyone else to see, but even if any of the team member does not know, at least a basic check by the leader is needed. The behavior perhaps looked simple and not harmful, but it can affect other people thinking that they can do the same thing without getting any repercussions which will lead to a spread of toxic thinking within the company.

Stage 3. “Maybe we should do something about it but there is nothing we * can * do”

By this point, you realized that the problem already occurred for quite some time and the effect was something you may not think of. Regret may have started to sprout, and you doubt yourself of why you didn’t handle this sooner, yet it is quite late to do it. But it is better to do something on the early stage before it grows into an outbreak of problems in the future.

Life Example:

               You got the call from your home, saying that some part of your backyard is catching fire and it has not been tamed yet. You thought that “maybe I should do something about it, but there is nothing I *can* do since I was away”, hoping that the people at home or anyone else in the neighborhood will help doing something about it.

 

Work Example:

               The problematic employee was still doing his job but not showing any improvement for his job and everyone else were dissatisfied with him as well but cannot do anything. Some good employees resigned because of their disappointment with the company for not doing anything to such person, and some others were started to show some decline of their effort at work. While the company keeps on pressuring everyone to keep up with the target for the year, the other employees got discouraged because they felt the problematic employee didn’t work as hard as they were and even then he still got the same treatment by the company without any warning or punishment.

The problem right now is real. The effect of not doing anything on the earlier stage is starting to get big, and you feel that you also cannot do anything at this point. But if you do something, what can you do? And what will happen after you do it? And where should you go after that?

In life example, you can try to call your neighbor home, or someone else at your neighborhood to help checking on the situation. It may be a branch catching on fire or the ‘culprit’ was trying hard to contain the fire but it was quite hard to do due to the size of spreading and somehow he needs help from other, yet cannot even shout help sue to he is being too busy taming his own house to notice the surrounding.

In work example, the leader could have warned or advised the employee yet was not heed by him because the company, in this case the HR also did not even do anything or issued any warning letter. Or perhaps HR already issued the warning letter and he tried to do better yet was not given appreciation because the leader thought that it was what he supposed to do. And because of his existence, the other employee working drive was slowly dwindle down but the company didn’t know what they can do to contain the situation.

 

Stage 4. “Maybe there was something we could have done, but it is too late now”

The title itself is already pretty much self-explanatory, right? You already see the problem is huge, even spreading out. Yet it’s also too late to try to contain it so all you can do is just cutting out the loss and hoping that situation will get better in the upcoming future.

Life Example:

               You saw in the news while on your way home that a certain area in your neighborhood was catching fire and it was spreading wildly to the other houses. When you arrived, your home was heavily burned and the people at your home was out on the street with soot on their face. The other houses on the same street as you were also caught fire and since it was found out early, the effect was not as bad as your house.

 

Work Example:

               The company was doing badly for the year due to some good employees resigned and the sales numbers did not reach the target, so in the end, they evaluate the whole organization and decided to release several underperformed employees, including the ‘initial’ toxic. After that, the company was basically understaffed and struggling to get back to their feet to recover from their loss.

 

All things always started small. When you did not put any attention on things and ignoring it without considering the effect in the long run, all it will give you was regret. Any amount of regret, no matter how small it was, does not have medicine. But every failure you faced in life can be a guide on how to reflect on other aspects. Not every solution will be available for you, some need trial and error, some need time to solve it. But all result, no matter good or bad, can serve as an example to make sure your readiness to handle the next problem in life.

To end this, I will be giving some possibilities for solving or prevention for both examples. You may agree or not, this is also part of a learning process for me too.

In life example, the spread of fire can be stopped if the neighbor dug a hole and burn anything there while making sure that the surrounding of it is not dry and easily caught fire. An accident can happen anytime, but people can try to minimize it beforehand.

In work example, should the leader take notice of the change of his team member and try to encourage his growth, perhaps the employee would not become worse. Or else, if the company counselor can be a mediator once they saw something is different from the employee, it is also can be one of the preventions.

Yes, life and work matter is on a different level of difficulties. There is plenty of influences affecting your decision in life, but everyone has their own need. Their basic understanding of things may differ, yet their basic life needs are eventually similar. As the old saying said, “do things that you want people to do to you”, let us try to be a bit more aware of our surroundings and do not be afraid of tackling the problem. Until then, let us do a reflection of things happening in our lives and hopefully, we can gradually adjust how we are looking at the problem ahead.

=AS= 1st April, 2020.

Insight Plus – Digital Leadership

 Nigel Stacey, one of Accenture Industry X.0 global lead was writing about ‘Leadership, not technology, makes digital champion’. There are several things that caught my attention in that article, mainly because I was contemplating a similar topic for quite some time without knowing how to address this issue properly or professionally. This article solved some of my questions, and even came up with other studies that support all the theories I’ve been having in the simplest word.

What is “LEADERSHIP” means in this digital era? Does it still need, given that people relied on the technology so much it's blurring the hierarchical lines and departments? The answer is “YES”. And it is even “HIGHLY” needed. Because technology changes nothing without the people ‘driving’ it.

Changes are exciting. But how can it become growth?

Growth requires focused execution and keeping this kind of implementation on track is the job of leaders. What kind of focused execution is needed then? That is strategic, deliberate changes in the behavior of a company and the people within.

Within the industry changes, there bound to be winners and there must be losers. And more often than not, the percentage of the winner and loser is not even 50:50, but it can be 20:80, or even an exaggerating number of 1:99

So what sets WINNERS apart?

There are many studies available that told us about how to be a winner, but not many can actually implement the suggestions or how-to in their life, less their company. For a company to be a winner, there must be something else that sets them apart from their peers or competition. One that was pointed out in the article was:

               “To maximize their scaling efforts, they’ve developed a muscle memory reflected and supported by their structure and organization “

This means that it is a habitual thing that was set in the beginning, with a joint effort from the whole organization within the company that continues to be perfected over time. Due to the repeating process of doing specific things, it became a muscle memory that does not even need any reminder anymore.

Continuing with the growth topic, the leader job can be quite hard too. Leading well and driving execution has never been easy. In fact, both companies and leaders have struggled with ever since the invention of the organized venture. And both have gotten even harder due to the inherent complexity of software, connectivity, and data.

A recent piece of Accenture research, ‘How to successfully scale digital innovation to drive growth’, points towards the key differences between the “WINNER/CHAMPIONS” and other companies, that can be linked to issue of leadership and execution. This research might not be the perfect answer to how leaders can succeed in handling the decision complexity, but at least it shows that all around us, companies are also struggling with the same.

There are 5 (five) critical areas that corporate leaders should focus on and master – with tasks to execute and skills needing to be developed that were highlighted by the report.

1.      Define the value that will guide innovation efforts

The leader needs to have the definition of the value company wants to create before setting the organization to the task.

This is critical because when the goal of the company is not clear, employees are more likely than not, end up trying to scale-up something that does not have rules or boundaries yet in order to succeed.

While it is good to have an aggressive stance on determining success, but the company needs to give a certain limitation in order to make sure that the employees can be held accountable towards their own work instead of flying over their scope and asking their leader to clean up after.

Creating a goal or value needs to be clear and concise. Therefore the much-needed element is clarity – of vision, strategy and the language within both – and also, aligning it with the business’ top management intention.

2.      Focus on internal organizational change and external digital value

What leaders should do is to strive to bridge the gap between what you are trying to scale for customers and the technologies deployed internally to support that scaling effort.

The best way to do this is to continuously blend digital transformation efforts with wider-reaching organizational change and change management.

Finding the right balance between implementing new technology and creating new ways of working is crucial.

3.      Build in-house innovation factories with targeted influence

Strive to grow new digital capabilities and talent within your organization as best as you can. Do not over-invest in hard-to-reintegrate spin-offs (or cheap copies) corporate start-ups or joint ventures.

New talent might be a solution to boost the growth of the company, but existing talents also need to be integrated and developed to be able to follow the current trend in the market. The company then integrate these talents into a new team which linked, and accountable to, the company’s profit and losses. By doing this, executives can have a preview of the impact on certain specified process or request before starting the larger-scale adaptation within the company.

In the study, the improvement shows what usually takes three years to be completed can be finished within eight months, using the same specific sets of requests.

4.      Find out what enables innovation in each business function

Technology alone might not change things, but it makes a difference than not. Leaders should learn enough about key technologies to understand where in their organization they might yield the best results.

This is also in line with the old saying, putting the ‘right’ person into the ‘right’ place than others, to their benefit. Those were called ‘enablers’, that help facilitate the process. Using Haier's famous unique organizational model “RenDanHeyi”, innovation technologies will never be separated from people and what user needs. Literally, “Ren” refers to each employee, “Dan” refers to the needs of each user, and “HeYi” refers to the connection (between employee and the needs of each user).

5.      Treat digital and innovation spending as investment, not as cost

Do give people the needed training to enhance their skills and give them the time and space to experiment and build innovation. Also, expect things to go slightly wrong before they get massively better instead of pressuring them to integrate the newly learned skill and expect that the result will be perfect.

Changes are difficult and driving it is never straight-forwards. But leaders should embrace the difficulties because over-time, leaders will learn to do it better. And once they know how to do that, growth will follow.

With the ever-growing need for technologies, innovation is highly needed and sought after. Yet despite many success stories and failures over the years, many are still grappling with transitioning to digital. To become a winner themselves, the company needs to catch up with the trend and quickly because the trend tends to fluctuate. If they failed to ride the wind of this, they need to wait for another trend or another breakthrough. Regardless of what kind of changes there are, technologies, innovation, or trends, it all was pointless without the people behind to drive it towards the desired destination.

Achieving success will depend on the commitment to develop and sustain an organization that is as innovative internally as it aspires to be for customers. When will you start your journey to become the winner? Start now!

 

-AS-

March 15th, 2020

Sources taken from here and here    

A Decade of Working Excerpt : A Decade of Learning

This is my first attempt to write things a bit “professionally”, but hey, someone needs to do this for themselves. I know that there are plenty of articles based on how you should work and doing the improvement in work life and so on. And here I am, doing the summary of what I’ve learned during my working period and hoping it will inspire you too. Or giving you ideas at least.

I’ve been working for more or less 10 years. Why more or less? If you see in my CV, it stated that I started my official corporate life since 2007, and this writing of mine is dated in 2020. Logically saying, it should be more than 10-yeas experience but hey, I down-counted it into 10 years.

Within the whole “official” working life, and the in-between job time that making my time looked wasted, I’ve learned a lot of things. And that is also exactly why I decided to do a milestone writing. Just so I also can reflect and look back at this moment in my next decade, or my possibly next endeavor.

This section will be a bit tl;dr so you might want to jump into the next one about the learning I did for the whole journey (go find the second section: The Learning)

I. The experience

When I was a junior high student, I’ve been dreaming of working life and being a financially independent person. I’ve made a lot of plans about my life like, start working at 20, having a good relationship and perhaps by 27 I will get married and start my own family. By 30 I might have 1 kid, counting on 2, while holding a managerial position in some good company.

Well, for me to be able to do that, it was ideally to be a good student so, at the first selection of employment, I would be able to land myself a good company that gives decent paycheck. But reality gave me challenges after challenges (and it still actively is).

I would not say I am a diligent and studious person. I’d rather do practice questions, stumble over the answers and trying my best to do shortcuts (if possible). What I think was that everything must have its own answer sheet and what matters is how you arrived at the conclusion of it, regardless of your way. Don’t get me wrong as my statement above can be interpreted incorrectly. I like a shortcut, but I always do it ethically. Thus, why I still struggling with my life until now.

When I was in my 2nd year of university, my family literally fell apart because my dad passed away. As the sole breadwinner, he was our family anchor. I was devastated, but I also need to be strong, so I decided to look for part-time work so I don’t need to add the family burden for my own food and transportation at least. And I sacrificed my study score to exchange it with a life skill.

By the time I graduated, the family saving was barely enough for our daily expenses, yet my average score is barely there to get me into a popular company. Luckily, one of my lecturers gave her recommendation to me to one of the small companies that she knew of and I officially got my first eligible salary. It’s not much and I still remember how it feels to actually have your paycheck transferred to your bank account. I’ve been working small jobs during my university, and they paid me in cash so you can imagine how insignificant was it that your employer doesn’t even bother to transfer your salary.

I tried to support the family fully since then. I saved for emergency funding in case something happened (no, I wasn’t dared to get insurance at that moment because what can you have when you only got paid for USD 350/month), I bike to work for more than 20kms/day to be able to save a mere USD 25/month just so I can go hang out with my friends once a month. While I was working, my friends were having a holiday before start looking for jobs. And yet, my company got restructured and I was let go.

Got unemployed for months lead me into a depression, but I can’t even succumb to it, and I started to struggle again to find another job. In between jobs, I took a challenging role in marketing and did door-to-door sales. Hey, a girl gotta do what they gotta do right? I even got the chance to go and expand the branch, but when a woman in the marketing section and they perform quite decently ( I don’t say well, but decent), rumors often happen. And my boss was believing it and again, let me go.

I wasn’t as down as the previous one because that was not the life I’ve been dreaming of as well. But I haven’t even got a proper one. Then I did try to find some small cash from online things (back in 2010, there are plenty of those still). Again, I struggled with interviews, the whole psychotest, and rejections. And land me another role in a small company. With a slightly better pay (considering the inflation, it was still a bit better)

And once again, let go because the boss doesn’t like how I put some restrictions on how they spend the company money (without caring about the future cash flow of the company). Maybe if you read it up to this one, you may think I was talking bad about my previous company but hey the company itself was gone bankrupt around 3-4 years ago so I can freely say it in the end. It was predictable since the boss did not care about the sustainability of the company.

At that time, I was leaning things already. That every experience I have in the company, all good and bad, was added up into my own level of understanding and shaping me into a better person, and hopefully a better leader.

I won’t dwell much about my other companies since it’s also too much information shared so let me continue to my supposed topic. What I learned in my whole decade of working for various companies and roles

II. The learning

Working for various companies and roles giving me some insight that not all companies are doing what in the textbook gave to you during your study. You need to be flexible, but also firm in your own beliefs, without giving way to things that are morally and ethically wrong.

Without further ado, I will list down several things that I learned during my first decade of work:

1.      Be passionate

Working may be tiring, but if you are passionate about your work, it won’t be as tiring as it looked like.

When you’re new to the workplace, you will be excited to implement your knowledge in the workplace. But let me tell you the hard truth. Most of what you’ve learned will not really show in what you’re doing.

2.      Establish your own flow and rules

Instead of only doing things by the book, or following what your supervisor had told you, be more creative. People have the ability to adapt, and therefore they evolve. This rule is not only shown in daily life but also in work life. So when you grasp the basic rule of what you need to do, you may be able to develop things by your own that may increase your own effectiveness and efficiency (and this also include your team members)

3.      Keep challenging your limit

I’m not encouraging you to do overtime. In fact, it’s been a while since I do one. Well, maybe once or twice a month due to a necessity, but other than that? Never.

What I encourage you to do was, try to challenge yourself to NOT do overtime, but keeping the current job (or maybe more) within the working hour only.

By doing so, not only you can have your own time for work-life balance, but the company will look at you differently and perhaps the next time you know, your promotion is at the corner.

4.      Exercise your right to say “No”

Nowadays, many people were seen working late at night in the office instead of going home to their family, or hang out with friends, or even just chilling at home, watching TV. Was it because the work was piling up? Perhaps.

But why? Because people are afraid to lose their job. Therefore, they are afraid to say a rejection for things that they may not be responsible to. That’s also why I said in point 2 to establish your own “rule”. Professionally of course.

5.      Keep your stress level in check

Please, please make sure you do this. Maybe you are not able to do things during the weekend due to family obligations or other reasons, but you can also take your leave just to make sure you don’t suffer from burnout from work.

Go on a vacation, do your hobbies, even go to the mall on working day without thinking of work can be a change of pace.

Many companies nowadays are trying to establish one day work at home where they encourage the employee not to go to the office to ensure that the employee was refreshed. You can go to a café, or stay at home and still working on your responsibility

6.      Be eager to learn

No matter how long you’ve joined the workforce for, never stop learning. I am not encouraging you to take a class or do an online course to add your skillset, but yes you can do that as well if you got the time (and money). As for me, I am more to the practical side since I know my will to study inside the classroom or even self-studying a book is practically none.

What I encourage more about learning was, no matter on which position you are, be it an intern, a senior, manager, or even CEO, you need to learn new things. And for me, the best additional learning I can get is from the people around you, from the secretary, the Planning Department on the next door, the intern, or even your own team member. Which means endless sources for learning and improving yourself.

7.      Be active to ask, “WHY”

Continuing the point above, learning and questioning came side-by-side. I’ve encountered several situations where I need to ask myself, why is this done this way and not that. Perhaps, you may see things differently than other people. And perhaps, things are actually blurry for others and you can give then the idea or some improvement from your simple “why”.

I encourage my team member to give me a question about things they don’t understand. Even a simple question of “What is the difference between GL, PL & BS?”. It makes me realize that my team member is eager to learn, and therefore I could also shape them into the people I can use better so we can grow together.

8.      Be confident of yourself

Not the blind confidence but real confidence that you are able to do things. Confidence and bragging may look the same, but bragging does not have a substance to the content, yet confidence was based on your own experience and can be seen from the way you do your work. Bragging people sometimes have their own substance to their bragging but you also need to be able to back it up with your skill to make your brag worth to listen.

9.      Be kind.

We never know what other people are facing. Some people can separate matter between work and other life aspects, but at times, the outer influence can also bring influence to the workplace.

Being kind does not mean that you are being used. Being kind is doing what you want others to do to you. If you wanted to be understood, then you also need to reciprocate the same way. Some said changes came from you, but others also said changes need a lot of people to move. How could you do the wave of being kind, if you are only waiting for the ripples to reach you before you do?

10.  Smile. First Impression lasts a long time.

Ever thought of why sometimes people look at you and smile, and you automatically smile back to them? No one ever hit a smiling person, unless they perhaps do it creepily. By smiling, you release the happiness hormone called endorphin to your brain little by little, and it will bring small changes to your body and the way you think. Believe it or not, you can actually deliver much more efficient work than if you’re only frowning.

So smile. Not only at work but implement it in your daily life.

There are many more points that I learned within my first decade of working, but I will stop at these 10 points for now. I might, or not, write more about things in the workforce. Or I might share things about life experiences, we never know. But I would like to thank you for sparing your time reading one part of my life and hope you can learn something out of it. If not, you can also treat it as one of the many articles that you’ve read before. The choice is all yours.

And by then, yours truly will leave the stage and fight for more experiences to share.

January 26, 2020

Moi 

 - This article is also posted in my LinkedIn -