Leadership by virtue: organization

Showing posts with label organization. Show all posts

Leading with Compassion: Martial Arts for Leaders

Martial arts is a great way to build physical strength, discipline and confidence. Martial arts can also teach us important leadership skills, offering insights into human behavior, trust, and respect. Compassionate leadership takes practice, and martial arts with its practical approach is a great way to increase awareness and understanding of the positive power of leading with compassion.

We do know that Leadership is the ability to inspire others towards a common goal. This can be done through personal presence, spoken words, and the demonstration of good character and values. Martial arts offers an ideal environment in which to practice these skills, as aspects of the practice such as respect for others, self-control, and understanding of one’s emotions can be explored.

Leadership is not about force and aggression - like martial arts, but rather about managing people in a way that encourages cooperation and respect. Martial arts can teach leaders to remain calm in the face of difficulty and to make decisions with clarity and foresight. By learning to control their own emotions, with knowledge of martial arts leaders can be better at managing challenging situations and inspiring their teams.

The practice of martial arts also offers key insights into effective communication. Martial arts teaches practitioners to communicate through their whole body, not just words. This physical communication helps to increase understanding and trust, as well as conveying feelings of respect and empathy. Leaders who are better listening, communicating and understanding can create an environment in which others feel comfortable and safe to express themselves.

Martial arts can also be a great way to foster teamwork and collaboration as a lot of practice is done with different partners and also with group of them. Through martial arts training, practitioners can learn to rely on one another in challenging situations, and to trust their partners in times of need. As a result, leaders can create a culture of mutual respect and collaboration in the workplace.

Leading with compassion is an important part of effective leadership. By utilizing the insights and teachings of martial arts, leaders can develop the skills and understanding to lead with empathy and respect. Through martial arts, leaders can create a culture of trust and collaboration, inspiring their teams to reach their highest potential.

Building a Team of Leaders: A Guide

Building a team of high-performing leaders is crucial for any business seeking success or other organization. As a business leader, you have the responsibility to identify, select, and develop individuals with the potential to lead your team to new heights and taking some responsibility from you. Below is a short guide that provides practical tips and examples to help you build a team of leaders with confidence and authority.

Identify Leadership Qualities

The first step in building a team of sub-organizational or department leaders is to identify the qualities that are essential for success in your organization. Do you need an assertive, innovative problem-solver, or an organized, detail-oriented person? Is interpersonal communication and collaboration essential, or do you prefer an independent leader? Knowing the qualities you are looking for will help you narrow your search and selection process.

Recruitment

Once you have identified the leadership qualities, it is time to start the outside or internal recruitment process. Tailor your recruitment efforts to fit the desired skills of the ideal leader. You can utilize human resource department for internal personnel or online job boards, attend job fairs and participate in local events, or conduct employee referrals. As you find candidates, evaluate their soft skills and determine how they fit into your business and leadership culture.

Interviewing

As you bring in candidates, you will need to evaluate them to find the right person for the job. Develop a set of questions that will help you get a better understanding of their capabilities and whether or not they are a good fit for your team. Be sure to ask open-ended questions that require more than a “yes” or “no” answer. Additionally, allow the candidate to get to know your company and ask questions of their own. Important issue is to give them a small task or a problem to solve.

Training and Development

Once you have chosen the right person for the job, you will need to train them and help them develop the skills they need to be a successful leader in your organization. Consider investing your time to guide them and in training and development programs to help them hone their skills. You could also look into mentorship programs or career development opportunities, such as certifications or workshops.

Empowerment

To ensure that your team of leaders is successful, you need to empower them to take ownership, make their own decisions and take responsibilities for them. Create an environment where employees can think and act independently with confidence, and give them the resources and support they need to be successful. Encourage them to take risks and experiment, and celebrate successes but never blame them in front of others.

Building a team of leaders can be a challenging task, but with the right selection process, mentoring, training and development opportunities, and empowerment, you can create an effective leadership team. By understanding what it takes to develop leadership skills and finding the right candidates, you will be well on your way to creating a strong and successful team. Remember that building a team of leaders is an ongoing process, and it requires time, dedication and commitment. Keep refining your approach and never stop searching for talented individuals who can help your business grow and succeed.

Challenges of Leadership in the Digital Age: leading a Generation X

Leadership in the digital age has changed from previous ages. The current generation, often referred to as Generation X (born 1965-1980), is a tech-savvy generation brought up with new computer tools. They are constantly connected via the internet and mobile devices, and have access to vast amounts of information at their fingertips. This presents both opportunities and challenges for leaders in the current digital age.

Leaders must be aware of the fast changing technological landscape and the impact it has on their organizations. They need to be able to adapt their leadership variety to the new changing environment in order to effectively engage and motivate their employees. Leaders must be able to effectively understand technology, use it for communication and collaboration with their team, while also managing the expectations of their organization’s stakeholders.

Leaders must also be cognizant of the fact that the generation X is used to instant gratification to their job done. This means that leaders must be able to provide timely feedback and recognition to motivate them. Leaders should also be prepared to be flexible and embrace change in order to keep up with the generation X and the ever-evolving digital age.

In addition to these challenges, leaders must also be aware of the need to bridge the generational gap between their team members. The generation X is used to working in a fast-paced, virtual environment, but older generations may be slower to adapt to this new way of working and co-working. So, leaders must be able to recognize this divide and lead in a way to bridge the gap by creating environment such as: open channels of communication and providing resources that cater to the needs of each generation.

In the digital age, leaders must be able to navigate and understand the world of online marketing and social media. As customers, the generation X is used to accessing information and services almost instantly, and leaders must be able to keep up with the ever-evolving digital landscape in order to effectively reach target audience. It is important that the today’s leaders must be aware of the potential risks associated with the use of social media and ensure that their organization’s online presence is positive and professional.

Leadership in the digital age is a challenging task that ask from leaders to be flexible and adaptable. They must be aware of the changing technological landscape and the impact it has on their organization, while also bridging the generational gap between their team members. With the right knowledge, strategies and tools, however, leaders can be prepared to successfully lead organizations into the digital age.

Leadership and Millenians

Millennials: too many companies you will work for are not built to take care of you. Until that changes, please take care of each other. But are companies of today really companies that do care about you (no matter if you are millenians or not)?

You hear about Millennials, Generation X, and the Baby Boomers all the time, but it’s not always clear who’s a part of these groups. In fact, all of these terms are fairly unofficial social constructs outside of the Boomers. This is what they’ve come up with (source New Guidelines Redefine Birth Years for Millennials, Gen-X, and 'Post-Millennials'):

• The Silent Generation: Born 1928-1945 (73-90 years old)
• Baby Boomers: Born 1946-1964 (54-72 years old)
• Generation X: Born 1965-1980 (38-53 years old)
• Millennials: Born 1981-1996 (22-37 years old)
• Post-Millennials (or generation Z): Born 1997-2010 (8-21 years old)

• Generation Alpha: Born after 2010

I have sons in millenians time range and have to admit that a good example of current situation on millenians question has been given by Simon Sinek in his video: This Is Why You Don't Succeed.

Insecurity drains the life out of employees

Not long ago a majority of workers worked for the same company for 20, 30 or more years. It was a normal occurrence. At the time many of my friends were asking me how can I shift so much and so easily from one employer to another? That was easy enough, since nothing was “pushing me” out of a company except my curiosity and new, different challenges. Same as today? No, not the same here. Those were different times and different society back then.

In 2014 Hewlett-Packard only eliminated 34,000 jobs, while JP Morgan Chase has cut 20,000 from its workforce and JC Penney and Sprint announced cuts … In '70s and '80s, not so long ago, a modification of labor market began and we were able to observe anti-worker policies forming up. Nowadays a new business model (not so new any more) is disentangling the ties between employers and employees, fueling the perception that it is good to have employment flexibility.

In today’s business spheres where results of globalization, outsourcing, contracting, downsizing, recession and even natural disasters are all together killing ‘a job security’, how does one deal with such uncertainties?

It is well known that people can deal with short bursts of pressure pretty good, but that chronic uncertainty throws them in a vicious cycle of stress and fear. According to the research done by Stuart Whitaker at the University of Cumbria, having an insecure job has a more damaging impact on people's health than actually losing a job.

When we do not know whether we’ll have a job next year or, even worse, next week, how do we plan the life? Could we consider a loan to buy a house, start family or save for college or save for retirement? In the face of job insecurity, thoughts like these bring only panic and more pressure. Can we still spend with easiness if we are so insecure for the jobs we have?

When people fear that the world around them will fall apart, when our future becomes foggy, when feelings of powerlessness paralyze us, we tend to start to flip out. We pile on more work than we can handle, we are afraid to take sick leaves. Some people start to function on drugs, coffee, cigarettes, alcohol and other substances. We drop everything that is good for us – we stop to care for our physical well-being, we stop practicing, we do not have fun with friends or have and enjoy vacations and so on.

Reasons your Focus is or isn’t going to Work

“If a man does not know to what port he is steering, no wind is favorable to him” by Seneca.

Yes, we have to focus!

The so-called Y (or better interrupt) generation has big difficulties to handle it what I see daily in my classroom.

Focus is the thinking skill that allows people to begin a task without procrastination and then maintain their attention and efforts until the task is complete. Attention is a mental muscle and like any other muscle, it can be strengthened through the right kind of exercise.

During my university years I spent many hours practicing ballroom dancing on the competition level. Vienna waltz was our warm up procedure but not just one round, but ten or more in a raw. I have learned that the secret to not get disoriented is to focus on a point far in the distance and visually always following the spot (or your partner’s face) extracts the entire surrounding environment. The same goes if you lead a company: you must find a beacon and drive your organization passionately in that direction.

Organizations and countries need people with strong focus on (important) goals. They all need a talent to continually learn how to do things better or best. Without such high-innovative performers there is no innovation, productivity and change.

Therefore, focus is the state or quality of having or producing a clear visual definition – a center of interest or activity we do. So, being focused means thinking about one thing while filtering out distractions. It is an important tool that can and will shape your life. In a longitudinal study tracking the fates of all 1,037 children born during a single year in the 1970’s in the New Zealand city of Dunedin particularly compelling results came out (Source: The Focused Leader, by Daniel Goleman, 2013):

For several years during childhood the children were given a battery of tests of willpower, including the psychologist Walter Mischel’s legendary “marshmallow test”—a choice between eating one marshmallow right away and getting two by waiting 15 minutes. In Mischel’s experiments, roughly a third of children grab the marshmallow on the spot, another third hold out for a while longer, and a third manage to make it through the entire quarter hour.

Do we still / again need Leaders?

Current economic and political situation in the world with all perturbations is a big puzzle for me whether we are having or not the leaders.

Manuel Lima in his TED talk A visual history of human knowledge explains that “for a long period of time, we believed in a natural ranking order in the world around us, also known as the great chain of being, or "Scala naturae" in Latin, a top-down structure that normally starts with God at the very top, followed by angels, noblemen, common people, animals, and so on. This idea was actually based on Aristotle's ontology, which classified all things known to man in a set of opposing categories.”

Consequentially we accepted some kind of leadership whether of a real person or imaginative / invented super being. Normal people were part of a branching scheme of the tree depending on their power or wealth or importance. This concept is in fact such a powerful metaphor for organizing big communities, organizations, countries or super national entities or conveying information to map a variety of systems of knowledge that still persists in our understanding of organizational order.

At the end of the Cold war things somehow started to fall apart. World became globally connected via air transport and mostly due to evolution of Internet. To be precise I think the Internet is actually changing the tree paradigm we lived thousands of years, quite a lot and pretty fast.

Information is not any more spread via top down approach which gave top people the power of it. Organizational schemes are flattening. Even such organizations as armies follow the new principle when teaching combats units how to behave in the battle. It is dealing with decentralized, independent cells, where there's no top leader leading the whole combat process. Rather, any soldier should or could take command if necessity of circumstances requires so.

What we experiences today is the shift from trees structures into networks. Networks really embody notions of decentralization. Bring in interconnectedness. And the most important people, knowledge, information, organizations, countries and more become interdependent. A fact so well embodied in Nature that we keep forgetting all the times. For a moment think of your body. How many cells you have, organs, extremities. Do you feel each finger all the times? No, all these work in unity. But your body is not alone in the Universe …. Therefore, interconnectivity or better entanglement is a natural order.

Even more, this new way of networked thinking is critical to solve many of nowadays’ complex problems we face. From decoding the human genome or brain up to understanding the vast Universe we live in.

Back to the topic in question – is there a space for a leader in such network notions?

Disciplines of execution

Not long ago I met a young upwardly mobile professional. While discussing his views on management practices his position was clear: the subordinate has to do as he is told by his manager no matter the consequences! I kind of disagree: what if this ‘command’ costs company a bad reputation or money or lost customers. He was clear again: regardless, a subordinate has to follow what he/she’s been told to do! Lower ranked people have, most probably, less experience, less information and no broaden picture about the final goal. I was kind of surprised by such determined stand point, but had to point out that a company is not a military organization (even there some flexibility is possible). If a subordinate cannot execute the order then a manager cannot trust him/her, was his prompt answer.

A bit of a shock for me: from blind obedience to trust issues.

I have been managing and leading different teams in different environments. I do not remember ever expecting my co-workers (not subordinates) to execute blindly what I had ordered. On the contrary, I was trying hard to stimulating their own opinion(s), their own way of doing it but with the notion to take responsibility as well. I still follow what Ken Robinson said: “The role of a creative leader is not to have all of the ideas; it is to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they’re valued!”

I’m positive that the true threats to humanity are not the Hitlers, the Dahmers and the Mansons but those that blindly obey. As those that order cannot do it by themselves they can achieve it only through the means of obedient people. Therefore, I am strongly against the situation when a person in authority makes a decision or gives a command, that decision or command should be followed without questioning simply because a person in authority gave it.

Avoid or not office politics inside the company?

Politics are as old as civilization is. We are all aware of that. The fascination with politics increased in the 16th century when Machiavelli wrote thesis on how to acquire and retain power The Prince.

The question is if politics are meant only for politicians? To be used only at a state (region, city) level? Or are there underlying politics going also in many other fields, say also in organizations?
We know there are. Some of you may have heard or experienced this: ‘There's too much wrangling, gaming and maneuvering going on – I just hate this organizational politicking?’

There are very few employees and even less top managers immune to gossip, having their ideas stolen or being set up by others who want their jobs or statuses.

Very rarely employees or senior managers are reluctant to take part in what is called political games, because most people want to advance their careers or ideas, have job security, earn more and get more recognition.

The term office politics often has a negative connotation. On the other hand the brute truth and reality is that to ensure your own success or your ideas or projects you must navigate the minefield of office politics.

“Milking” – a new way of getting information from applicants?

Have you ever been through a hiring interview process?

If yes, what were your experiences: positive or negative?

There is not a lot of talk about it but abusive hiring processes is reality and cost organizations millions of dollars by turning possible customers into lifelong ‘haters’. Not long ago I've read that: the impact of a poor ‘candidate experience’ is uncalculated, unreported, and not discussed, making it quite possibly one of the largest ‘hidden costs’ facing modern organizations (by Dr. John Sullivan) but companies are never the less doing it.

Why?

There are millions of people searching for their jobs. Employers use different tactics to select between applicants. What I found lately is a tactic where prosperous new employee should prepare presentation (e.g. to board members) with one of employee from hiring organization. It is presented on an interview discussion that new hire could get the position only if presentation would be a fit for the board. The only connection between a position in a new company and a candidate is this employee fellow. So the employee is all sweet and kind and asking tons of questions and diligence in writing what a candidate says. Company employee squeezes applicant from different angles and asks to prepare special scenarios and data. It is an additional knowledge, experiences and possible different thinking that is asked from candidate.

Coach-ability?

Being a teacher and author of the book on leadership my interest was picked up by the article 'Why Leaders Are Easier to Coach than Followers?' published in HBR. I believe that learning or coaching is something that anybody would like to do. Acquiring new knowledge, learn or improve oneself is something that stipulates survival in the Nature.

The article says “Recent research from PsychTests, however, reveals that followers may not be as compliant as we assume. In a study that measured individuals’ openness to coaching, PsychTests discovered that people who identify as followers are actually less open to coaching than people who identify as either leaders or adapters”. There is a graph within the supporting the claim that in all measured aspects followers performed the worst.

In the research three groups were studied: adapters, leaders and followers. I recognized last two groups but had a problem with the first one – adapters. In the article I’ve learnt that adapters are employees who are versatile, can both lead and follow, and are open to feedback and learning. This is a surprise: what are adapters if they cover both other groups. I cannot see leaders that cannot adapt to environment and change due to required situation (I wrote about this in Sun Tzu wisdom and Leadership). What about followers? Do they not adapt to work, rules and leaders? Both, leaders and followers, are usually most of the time outside their comfort zone when performing their ‘day-to-day’ work, so adaptation is crucial to them.

Why, then, there is another (the third) group?

So far I have explored several types of leadership and what constitutes them. This post I dedicate to another two leadership styles that, considering their terms, could not have anything in common.

The first is ‘humble leadership’. In the dictionary humble means ‘having or showing a modest or low estimate of one's own importance.’ Well, hard to imagine a leader that has low estimate of his/her importance and leads well. But let’s see how different sources define it:

‘humility means being honest’ - why then do we have two words?
a study on ‘humble leadership’ states that “when employees observed altruistic or selfless behavior in their managers … they were more likely to report feeling included in their work teams.” OK, I’m not to repeat again and again that management is not leadership, but would still point out that a leader that has emotions would surely have the same results. It is not about humbleness but emotions –Goleman would probably agree.
another research found out ‘that managers who exhibit traits of humility—such as seeking feedback and focusing on the needs of others—resulted in better employee engagement and job performance.’
Feedback is definitively not correlated with humility but rather with empathy and professionalism.
the important attributes that a ‘humble leader’ has to have are: engage in dialogue, not debates; admit mistakes; embrace uncertainty and accept ambiguity; be open to others’ opinions; let people do their jobs; be balanced; secure and recognize. The very same attributes we have already seen in other styles of leadership.

Leadership: More Intelligence or Emotions

Should a leader use mostly intelligence or should the emotions be primary in dealing with people, decision making…?

Some of the definitions of intelligence say:

Merriam-Webster: the ability to learn or understand things or to deal with new or difficult situations; the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations.
Dictionary.com: capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.
The free dictionary: The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge; capacity for learning, reasoning, and understanding; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.

And emotions are defined as:

Merriam-Webster: a conscious mental reaction (as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body.
Dictionary.com: any strong agitation of the feelings actuated by experiencing love, hate, fear, etc., and usually accompanied by certain physiological changes, as increased heartbeat or respiration, and often overt manifestation, as crying or shaking.
The free dictionary: A mental state that arises spontaneously rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes; a feeling: the emotions of joy, sorrow, reverence, hate, and love.

An outstanding Leadership for cross cultural team(s)

Have you met a person that was thinking in a completely different way to yours? What kind of impression does it leave on you? Do you dismiss it immediately, or you find it worthy, erroneous …?

For me it is exciting, definitely because my life path is somehow atypical, too. In our core we people are similar no matter where we come from. Not long ago I had a TEDx talk about the human behavior that surpasses “the cultural background noise” – “the noise” that accompanies us throughout our life and normally influences our values, ethics and morals, mentally and subconsciously. Unfortunately, this kind of reasoning I find that is still missing in common stances and leadership practices. Let me try to show some examples which are going to be based on atypical views.

From the management’s perspective, managers perform tasks, manage people and do business. Accordingly, there are numerous methodologies and tools helping to manage business and people: Just In Time Production, Kobayashi’s 20 keys, Six Sigma, Business Process Reengineering … to name some. In business environment, do all these methodologies and tools really come out the way we need them to? Current economic and financial situation makes us doubt it. If these tools were as efficient and as great as claimed, then we should not see companies struggling and vanishing. Why it is then so?

EGO and Leadership?

“The ego” – a positive or a negative feature? Is it a necessary ingredient, an essential to had by an exceptional leader?

We all seem to be able to spot a strong ego in others. Brain studies cannot point to the place in a brain where ego could exist, what could it be? Outside of a few technical papers ego, is still a very poorly defined concept. Animals don’t have it, for them it is only an awareness of self. Studies show that awareness of ‘self’ in humans is allocated to the left brain. Could this be the ‘true’ place for our ego?

A research showed that at least 99% of all human problems are caused by the false opinion of ‘self’. The most obvious and known falsities are about our perceptions of doing right to environmental, in economic and in political issues. There are others false opinion like the ones generated among and within families, different groups or societies, friends and enemies. But does a self-important demonstration of power or ego always give the result one expect by being egocentric? I’m positive that in most cases it does not.

The ego presents one of the biggest barriers for people to work together effectively. When people get caught up in their egos, it erodes their compatibility, emotions, reasoning. It blurs the understanding and cooperation. And we mostly get just the unproductive clash of egos.

Leadership and succession

“A person who does not worry about the future will shortly start to worry about the present” is an ancient Chinese proverb.

Unfortunately, still rare occurrence is leadership succession which is and should be too important to ignore.

A company CEO is irrevocably gone. Who will take his position? Or, the top executive is attracted by your competition. Is there anyone new ready to fill the role? What would you do: you may end up with an empty C-suite or, even worse, get an under qualified person to fill the job because simply there is no one better to take it over.

Transition period in the top management position may present quite hazardous times for companies. If the previous CEO has had significant and sound results a worry about his successor’s ability to maintain the same momentum will inevitably arise. To avoid a future crisis in leadership succession there should be developed and implemented plan for leadership succession beforehand. This should cover planned process of leadership transition but also the unplanned ones. Important functions will thusly in large amount continue uninterrupted.

Increasingly large and globally integrated companies take leadership development and CEO succession extremely seriously. In one study of more than 200 CEO successions the researchers found out that in contender succession turnover among senior executives has a positive effect on a company’s profitability but in an outsider succession it has a negative impact. So, companies face two ways to fill the empty position: with internal process of development of a specific candidate or hire externally and choose the best free one on the market.

Problem solving and Leadership

Broadly perceived “western” trap says: “Problem solving is the essence of why leaders exist to do.”

Why is that false?

Like falling dominoes also the problems tend to accumulate fast? Most managers take short-cuts just to temporarily alleviate the most important tension points - just to be able to move onto the next problem. So, being unable to solve the core of each problem, the managers continuously get caught in the trap of a never-ending cycle thusly making it even more difficult to find any real resolutions. And these actions are draining all their energy and time resources.

Blurb of the book:

Interwoven around the leadership process, corporate challenges and martial arts this book brings the reader along to "listen in" on the day to day developments, struggles and challenges.

The reader is shown from a first-person perspective the internal refinement of a leadership process based on non-Western approach. The main character, brought up in Europe and therefore used to Western "cultural background noise" although practicing Chinese martial arts, has to learn and understand the differences brought by Far East principles if he wants to grasp leadership from a different angle ...

The book has eighteen (18) chapters. Chapters one to five are dedicated to the background setting and the evolution of the story and characters; Chapters six to nine are devoted to open different approaches and mentality that is coming from Far East and Martial arts philosophy and in parallel gradually introducing difficulties in leadership process and (miss)understanding of those Far East concepts; final Chapter eighteen is dedicated to merge those Far East and Martial arts concepts and philosophies with "known" Western ones and thus opening a new entanglement approach proposed with the use of the Leadership by Virtue.

A video review:

Jaro Berce has poured in the “Leadership by Virtue” his passion, knowledge, and wisdom. It is an exceptional view of blending eastern and western thinking and practices; it is thought provoking, an eye opener, challenging and more.

The book “Leadership by Virtue” by Jaro Berce is not just a novel, but a tremendous learning experience (by Pamela Jill Rapley).

Management practices and tools that just “don’t work”

From the management’s perspective managers perform tasks, manage people and do business. Accordingly, there are numerous methodologies and tools helping to manage business and people:

(1) In Japan at Toyota Motor Company, Taichii Ohno and Shigeo Shingo incorporated Ford’s type of production and some other techniques into an approach named the Toyota Production System or Just In Time Production (JIT). The inventory strategy strives to improve a business return on investment by simultaneously reducing in-process inventory and associated costs.
(2) The core idea of a Lean organization is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Simply, lean means creating more value for customers with less resource.

(3) Iwao Kobayashi’s 20 keys is a longer list that can be used in manufacturing audits. It reads very much like a “who’s who” of manufacturing innovations and hence makes a very useful checklist.

(4) Six Sigma (6б) is a business management strategy originally developed by Motorola in 1981. It was initially aimed at quantifying the defects that occurred during manufacturing process first and then at reducing those defects to a very small level.

(5) Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is a top-down approach in which organizations become more efficient and modernized. Reengineering is a fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, quality, speed and service.

(6) The Self Directed Work Team (SDWT) is perhaps the most powerful organizational concept that motivates, coordinates, solves problems and also makes better decision than an individual could. But this performance comes at a price: decisions are slow, work teams require extensive training and months to mature.

(7) Total Quality Management (TQM) is a set of management practices throughout the organization geared to continuously improve the business processes in order to ensure that the organization consistently meets or exceeds in satisfying a customer or a supplier.

(8) … others.

Organizations are made for employees to work there and not opposite: employee should fit the organization. As the organization grows larger and more complex, management at the top lead and decide less by firsthand experience, but rather more and more on heavily processed data. From their standpoint they rarely see business flowing in the same way as do people down in production or on the sales floor. To understand huge amounts of data and information that is streaming toward them, after a throughout long training, they finally achieve to see the reality through the distorting glasses they've had to put on. Decisions they make and the responsibility they shoulder relies on tangible data. But these glasses somehow filter out emotions, feelings, sentiments, moods, and almost all the nuances of human situations that are part of everyday organizational culture consequently filtering or better losing all the tacit knowledge that drives business processes.

Organizational culture is the sum of values and rituals defined by rules. It is also a part of a “bigger picture” that surrounds an organization. This poses some problems if organization shock-wave through different cultures.

Four decades ago IBM tried to unify corporate culture in its subsidiaries all over the world. Geert Hofstede carried out a world-wide survey on employee values. The result was very informative and demonstrative. There were other researchers of the same topic too. A common conclusion of all those studies is that “we are definitely different”.

Leading with Compassion: Martial Arts for Leaders