Chapter 7

Management of Changing Workplace

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Objectives

How to manage business environment?

What do you understand by digital economy?

What are the challenges of combining robotics, AI, and humans?

Do you understand the power of critical thinking and collective wisdom?

The following are discussed:

• Management of Business Environment
• Understanding Digital Economy
• Challenges for Combining Robotics, AI, and Humans
• Critical Thinking and Collective Wisdom

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Technological disruption, new competitors, revolutionary scientific discoveries, breakthrough technologies, and challenging regulations are the major drivers to bring a major change at workplaces.

Identify the necessary changes in the workplace that will help you get the results you need. Desired results typically include increased productivity, better engagement of team members, or a more efficient use of resources in order to cut overhead. Start by digging deep and assessing the current workplace infrastructure versus the desired future state. Do you have an accurate assessment of both the challenges and the opportunities of the existing environment?

A change will pose challenges to team members who may be reluctant to move or to give up the assigned task. Enter change management strategies considering the following:

1. Identify the change in workplace that will help to reach the desired outcomes
2. Prepare everyone for the changed environment
3. Make the workplace change real and set the expectations
4. Provide the resource and support to sustain the change

7.1 Management of Business Environment

Managing business demands needs creating an environment conducive to all in an effective manner to serve the business purpose and enhance the satisfaction of all stakeholders and change with the changing requirements.

There are two components of business environment: One is manageable and the other always presents challenges to your business. You are required to understand the changing circumstances and manage your organization to withstand the changing requirements and continue with business. The components are as follows:

• External environment
• Internal environment

External Environment

The external environment includes all those factors that influence a business and exist outside the organization. You have no direct control over these factors, but the changing environment may help you to find the trends and notice the changing requirements. Proactively you need to build the organizational strengths and face changing requirements to capture the benefits. Your collection of information about the following factors is important for the study of the external environment.

1. Customers
2. Suppliers
3. Competitors
4. Public (communities)
5. Marketing intermediaries

Internal Environment

The internal environment is manageable by leaders and it comprises the following;

1. Objectives of business
2. Policies of business
3. Production capacity
4. Production methods
5. Management information system
6. Participation in management
7. Composition of board of directors
8. Managerial attitude
9. Organizational structure
10. Features of human resource

The noted challenges are worked on with clarity and presence of mind when leaders take guidance from past experiences that help them in dealing with present matters. Emotional agility is the ability to do away with unnecessary baggage of the past.

Emotional Agility

Business managers in order to effectively manage the internal environment are always challenged to manage the baggage of past experiences and take a mindful approach to meet with the demands of business.

The following text has been adapted from David and Congleton (2013):

Effective leaders don’t buy into or try to suppress their inner experiences. Instead they approach them in a mindful, values-driven, and productive way—developing what we call emotional agility. In our complex, fast-changing knowledge economy, this ability to manage one’s thoughts and feelings is essential to business success. Numerous studies, from the University of London professor Frank Bond and others, show that emotional agility can help people alleviate stress, reduce errors, become more innovative, and improve job performance.

Workplace environment must have a focus on strategic goals and a strong desire to reach there without fail. The most important factors in the matter that lead to either engagement or disengagement of professionals are as follows:

1. Organizational structure and leadership challenges in EPMO/portfolio/program/project
2. Focus on ethical leadership

Organizational Structure and Leadership

The need for leaders at all levels is one of the 12 critical issues identified in the Global Human Capital Trends 2014 survey published by Deloitte University Press, the publishing arm of the professional services firm’s leadership center. The following text has been adapted from the survey:

Adam Canwell, Vishalli Dongrie, Neil Neverasand, and Heather Stockton, who work for Deloitte in various locations, point out that leadership “remains the No. 1 talent issue facing organizations around the world,” with 86% of respondents to the survey rating it “urgent” or “important.” However, the fact that only 13% say they do an excellent job of developing leaders at all levels means that this area has the largest “readiness gap” in the survey.

The Deloitte team argues that “21st-century leadership is different.” Canwell and his colleagues write: “Companies face new leadership challenges, including developing Millennial and multiple generations of leaders, meeting the demand for leaders with global fluency and flexibility, building the ability to innovate and inspire others to perform, and acquiring new levels of understanding of rapidly changing technologies and new disciplines and fields.” No wonder organizations are coming up short.

Almost inevitably, the problem is felt to be especially acute today. This is a result of the strengthening of the global recovery, the desire on the part of the companies to expand in new markets, and the growing numbers of older leaders choosing to retire.

A key part of the solution identified by the Deloitte team is for organizations to develop leadership pipelines at every level. At present, it says, companies are not only not developing enough leaders, they are also not equipping those they are creating with the critical capabilities and skills they need to succeed. “Today’s market environment places a premium on speed, flexibility, and the ability to lead in uncertain situations. At the same time, the flattening of organizations has created an explosion in demand for leadership skills at every level.”

Some leadership skills are learnable and sharpen easily where others come with time, experience, and exposure to real-life challenges.

Where should organizations begin? A few starting points include:

• Engaging top executives to develop leadership strategy and actively govern leadership development
• Aligning leadership strategies and development with evolving business goals
• Focusing on three aspects of developing leaders—developing leaders at all levels, developing global leaders locally, and developing a succession mind-set
• Implementing an effective—and unique—leadership program

But there is no time to delay. The best-performing organizations are already on their way.

Project management structure and framework support the development of leadership at all levels with clarity of the line of communication. Each goal is translated into projects, the interrelated and interdependent projects are grouped together in a program, and everything is managed under the umbrella of a portfolio, when the line of communication has clarity among a program and a portfolio.

7.2 Understanding Digital Economy

The following text has been adapted from Anderson and Wladawsky-Berger (2016):

It’s an economy of limitless opportunities for some and disruption and displacement for others. Many firms—such as Kodak, Blockbuster, Sears, and Blackberry—were unable to adapt, while others are thriving. According to MIT Sloan research, the companies that are adapting to a digital world are 26% more profitable than their industry peers. The focus is kept on following;

Customer expectations

No transformation is more challenging than meeting the service expectations of digitally empowered customers. Digital technologies enable companies to better engage with their customers and offer superior experiences at affordable costs. But providing outstanding experiences to increasingly savvy, and fickle, customers is getting harder.

Product enhancements

Thriving companies are also integrating related products and services into sophisticated industry solutions, while extending and restructuring industry boundaries, essentially creating whole new industries.

Collaborative innovations

Companies must become more innovative to better respond to the highly competitive, global business environment. Collaboration is indispensable for innovation, both within the company’s own boundaries and beyond, with customers, partners, startups, universities, and research communities.

Thriving companies are harnessing collaborative digital networks to build ecosystems, such as Amazon, PayPal, Fidelity, Aetna, Apple, and Microsoft. Ecosystems like these are moving beyond linear supply chains to partner with providers of complementary products and services (or sometimes even competitors). According to MIT research, companies with 50% or more of their revenues from digital ecosystems have higher revenues and higher profit margins than their industry’s average.

Collaboration and ecosystems are particularly important in the emerging Internet of Things, where multiple companies across different industries must make sure that their offerings work with each other in a number of highly complex areas including health care, home automation, and smart cities.

Companies such as AUDI, Club Med, and mBank are competing with digital innovations by empowering local teams to build solutions quickly while helping them identify and leverage synergies. These companies are also creating accessible and reusable global platform components that give local solutions competitive advantages while at the same time coaching local teams in designing and learning from experiments.

Organizational leadership

Companies must rethink their structures and culture to better deal with new market environments and business models. The hierarchic organization that prevailed in the 20th century’s production-oriented industrial economy will not work in the more global and fast-changing digital economy. The companies that are most successfully adapting are making a cultural shift from “Mad Men” to “Math Men,” where decision making is increasingly based on data rather than on the frequently wrong opinions of senior executives. These companies are adding data scientists to enhance organizational learning. They’ve made some decisions faster by relying on algorithms, and they are introducing artificial intelligence, robotics, and other advanced technologies as appropriate.

While technologies advance rapidly, organizations and skills advance slowly, and the gap between swiftly evolving technology and the slower pace of human development will grow quickly in the coming decades as exponential improvements in artificial intelligence, robotics, networks, analytics, and digitization affect more and more of the economy and society. Inventing effective organizations for the digital economy is the grand challenge for our time, and the companies that are already adapting are leading the way.

Therefore, you just cannot ignore the fast advancements in digital economy. It may become fatal when you do understand it but do not prepare yourself for it, just delay action for some later point in time.

You need focus on key trends that include rapidly aging population in developed countries, the rise of smart machines, new media, social tools, global connectivity, and increasing use of sensors and processing for analytics.

The leaders need to prepare themselves for the attack of technology and digitization. It is going to happen, whether one likes it or not; sooner the preparations are made, the better equipped the organizations will be.

The key skills to align with upcoming challenges are as follows:

1. Open Mindset for Different Perspectives:

   Leaders are required to keep a learning mode for challenges and prepare themselves to view different perspectives for necessary changes with an open mind

2. Innovative and Adaptive Thinking:

   Have the ability to think and come up with solutions beyond routine. You may be using technology and design thinking to integrate new ideas into existing processes, systems, and products. While shifting toward automation of routine work and off-shoring, people with an ability to adapt and respond to unique unexpected circumstances of the moment will thrive in the workplace.

3. Virtual Collaboration and Social Intelligence:

   An ability to work virtually across boundaries, the Internet has become more pervasive in all parts of the world and it is another important skill to learn. It is an ability to assemble a virtual team together to work on projects and harness the power of technology to develop deep collaborations. Use collaborative tools, and tap into talent networks across the globe. Work with people from all cultures, race and religion, and social intelligence and it will set you apart from machines. The skills to develop deep and meaningful relationships with others, to collaborate, to sense, and to adapt thinking styles, and the mannerisms to align with others may be fine-tuned effectively with social intelligence.

4. Ability to Work across Discipline:

   The business world needs systems, services, and products; the ability to work across disciplines has become important. Most project works require multidisciplinary teams to develop an ecosystem.

   Elon Musk, the extremely successful billionaire who built four multi-billion companies by his mid-40s, is an “Expert-Generalist.” His expertise ranges from Rocket Science, Engineering, Physics, and Artificial Intelligence to Solar Power and Energy. His ability to integrate concepts from different fields helps him to be able to spot trends and patterns that others were not able to do. An understanding of several disciplines helps to be able to transfer and integrate knowledge in a way a single discipline is not able to do.  

5. Understanding of Different Media Types:

   The ability to understand various media platforms and how best to communicate effectively through them is a valuable skill. Social media has a strong influence and the world is now gradually being driven by it. The ability to develop content using new media forms has become critical to leverage these for persuasive communication.

6. Computational Thinking and Analytics:

   Digitization and technological advancement will drive the need for tech-related skills. In particular, computational thinking will be a highly demanded skill as big data and analytics become a reality in our everyday lives. Data scientists will be required to ply through mountains of data to make sense of everything, and spot trends and patterns for use in consumer marketing, human resources, banking, and other sectors. Being trained as a psychologist, and working as a human resource practitioner, I was not able to really understand and use data in my job until 4 years back when I decided to take up a doctorate in information technology. The training equipped me with the skills to use software, new media tools, as well as analytics to become much more effective in my job.

7. Changing Fast for AI

   The following text has been adapted from Bersin (2017):

   The digital world of work is here, and organizations are struggling to adapt. JPMorgan Chase & Co now uses software to perform the mind-numbing job of interpreting commercial loans, reducing 360,000 hours of lawyer time each year.  AI software can now identify leukemia in photos and X-rays, learning faster than technicians. Amazon.com reduced new hire training to only two days because of its newest robotics used in shipping. And the stories go on and on.

   Our research shows that AI and robotics are entering the workforce much faster than you may have thought. 38% of companies in our new Deloitte Human Capital Trends research (10,400 respondents from 140 countries) believe that robotics and automation will be “fully implemented” in their company within five years.

   “38% of companies believe AI and robotics will be “fully implemented” in their company within five years”.

7.3 Challenges for Combining Robotics, AI, and Humans

The incorporation of robotics and AI, on one hand, is creating efficiency and adding value with consistency in repetitive results, pushing humans to more defined roles and unique positions so as to capture the added value and streamline them for enhanced desired end results. A paradigm shift in organizational structure is necessitated to capture the enhanced efficiency in business process.

Leadership is having challenges to work out an efficient combination of AI and human-centered roles to work together for enhanced efficiency and excellence in performance for business end results.

The following text has been adapted from Lindzon (2017):

Artificial Intelligence may still be in its infancy, but it’s already forcing leadership teams around the world to reconsider some of their core structures.

“Advances in technology are causing firms to restructure their organizational makeup, transform their HR departments, develop new training models, and reevaluate their hiring practices. This is according to Deloitte’s 2017 Human Capital Trends Report, which draws on surveys from over 10,000 HR and business leaders in 140 countries. Much of these changes are a result of the early penetration of basic AI software, as well as preparation for the organizational needs that will emerge as they mature.”

“AI is definitely not eliminating jobs, it is eliminating tasks of jobs, and creating new jobs.”

“What we concluded is that what AI is definitely doing is not eliminating jobs, it is eliminating tasks of jobs, and creating new jobs, and the new jobs that are being created are more human jobs,” says Josh Bersin, principal and founder of Bersin by Deloitte. Bersin defines “more human jobs” as those that require traits robots haven’t yet mastered, like empathy, communication, and interdisciplinary problem solving. “Individuals that have very task-oriented jobs will have to be retrained, or they’re going to have to move into new roles,” he adds.

The survey found that 41% of respondents have fully implemented or made significant progress in adopting AI technologies in the workforce, yet only 15% of global executives say they are prepared to manage a workforce “with people, robots, and AI working side by side.”

See the shift shown in Figure 7.1.

As a result, early AI technologies and a looming AI revolution are forcing organizations to reevaluate a number of established strategies. Instead of hiring the most qualified person for a specific task, many companies are now putting greater emphasis on cultural fit and adaptability, knowing that individual roles will have to evolve along with the implementation of AI.

On-the-job training has become more vital to transition people into new roles as new technologies are adapted, and HR’s function is quickly moving away from its traditional evaluation and recruiting function—which can increasingly be done more efficiently using big data and AI software—toward a greater focus on improving the employee experience across an increasingly contingent workforce.

The Deloitte survey also found that 56 percent of respondents are already redesigning their HR programs to leverage digital and mobile tools, and 33 percent are utilizing some form of AI technology to deliver HR functions.

See Figure 7.2 for comparative highlights.

The integration of early artificial intelligence tools is also causing organizations to become more collaborative and team oriented, as opposed to the traditional top-down hierarchal structures.

“To integrate AI, you have to have an internal team of expert product people and engineers that know its application and are working very closely with the frontline teams that are actually delivering services,” says Ian Crosby, cofounder and CEO of Bench, a digital book-keeping provider. “When we are working AI into our frontline service, we don’t go away to a dark room and come back after a year with our masterpiece. We work with our frontline bookkeepers day in, day out.”

In order to properly adapt to changing technologies, organizations are moving away from a top-down structure and toward multidisciplinary teams. In fact, 32 percent of survey respondents said they are redesigning their organizations to be more team-centric, optimizing them for adaptability and learning in preparation for technological disruption.

Finding a balanced team structure, however, doesn’t happen overnight, explains Crosby. “Very often, if there’s a big organization, it’s better to start with a small team first, and let them evolve and scale up, rather than try to introduce the whole company all at once.”

Crosby adds that Bench’s eagerness to integrate new technologies also impacts the skills the company recruits and hires for. Beyond checking the boxes of the job’s technical requirements, he says the company looks for candidates that are ready to adapt to the changes that are coming.

“When you’re working with AI, you’re building things that nobody has ever built before, and nobody knows how that will look yet,” he says. “If they’re not open to being completely wrong, and having the humility to say they were wrong, we need to reevaluate.”

As AI becomes more sophisticated, leaders will eventually need to decide where to place human employees, which tasks are best suited for machines, and which can be done most efficiently by combining the two.

“It’s a few years before we have actual AI, it’s getting closer and closer, but AI still has a big problem understanding human intent,” says Rurik Bradbury, the global head of research and communication for online chat software provider LivePerson. As more AI software becomes available, he advises organizations to “think of those three different categories—human, machine, or cyborg—and decide who should be hired for this job.”

While AI technologies are still in their infancy, it won’t be long before every organization is forced to develop their own AI strategy in order to stay competitive. Those with the HR teams, training program, organizational structures, and adaptable staff will be best prepared for this fast-approaching reality.

Let us find AI in near future

The following text has been adapted from the MIT Sloan Research Report, September6, 2017, on “Reshaping Businesses with Artificial Intelligence” in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group—Closing Gap Between Ambition and Action (Ransbotham et al., 2017):

Operations and manufacturing: Executives at industrial companies expect the largest effect in operations and manufacturing. BP plc, for example, augments human skills with AI in order to improve operations in the field. “We have something called the BP well advisor,” says Ahmed Hashmi, global head of upstream technology, “that takes all of the data that’s coming off of the drilling systems and creates advice for the engineers to adjust their drilling parameters to remain in the optimum zone and alerts them to potential operational upsets and risks down the road. We are also trying to automate root-cause failure analysis to where the system trains itself over time and it has the intelligence to rapidly assess and move from description to prediction to prescription.

Customer-facing activities: Ping An Insurance Co. of China Ltd., the second-largest insurer in China, with a market capitalization of $120 billion, is improving customer service across its insurance and financial services portfolio with AI. For example, it now offers an online loan in three minutes, thanks in part to a customer scoring tool that uses an internally developed AI-based face-recognition capability that is more accurate than humans. The tool has verified more than 300 million faces in various uses and now complements Ping An’s cognitive AI capabilities including voice and imaging recognition.

Why Adapt AI?

Executives simultaneously recognize that their organization will not likely be the sole beneficiary of AI in their markets. Respondents expect that both new entrants and incumbents would similarly see the potential for benefits. Three-quarters of respondents foresee new competitors using AI to enter their markets while 69 percent expect current competitors to adopt AI in their businesses. Furthermore, they realize that suppliers and customers in their business ecosystem will increasingly expect them to use AI.

THE WAY FORWARD: Implications for Future

The Future of Work

As AI is increasingly applied to knowledge work, a significant shift will likely take place in the workplace, affecting many jobs in the Western middle class. Contrary to recent dire predictions about AI’s effect on employment, our survey suggests cautious optimism. Most respondents, for example, do not expect that AI will lead to a reduction of jobs at their organization within the next five years. Nearly 70 percent also said they are not fearful that AI will automate their own jobs. By a similar margin, respondents hope that AI will take over some of their presumably boring and unpleasant current tasks. However, respondents overwhelmingly agree that AI will both require employees to learn new skills within the next five years and augment their existing skills. (See Figure 7.6 in next page.) Taken together, these portend adjustment, not annihilation. “Even with rapid advances,” says Erik Brynjolfsson, Schussel Family Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, “AI won’t be able to replace most jobs anytime soon. But in almost every industry, people using AI are starting to replace people who don’t use AI, and that trend will only accelerate.”

Shifting Value Creation

Where will AI create, destroy, or shift economic value?

Consider the health care industry, one of the largest and most resilient sources of economic activity in the world. Health care spending makes up one-sixth of the U.S. economy, and on average, about one-tenth of the economies of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member nations. AI is already altering the health care value chain: Machines read diagnostic images, surgeons rely on robots, and an ever-increasing number of real-time medical devices contribute and communicate data to improve preventive and chronic care.

While AI may create value within an industry, it is far from clear exactly which organizations will see their fortunes rise and which will see decline. When IT vendors, medtech companies, radiologist networks, hospitals, specialized startups, and even insurance companies all strive to take advantage of AI to improve and lower the costs of diagnostics, the effects of AI will likely be uneven.

It’s too early to tell which types of organizations may benefit from AI in health care. But if regulatory concerns can be worked out, the industry has numerous sources of detailed data. And as Marcus Winter, head of reinsurance development at Munich Re Group, remarks, “In today’s world, with the proliferation of Big Data, there are precious few exclusive data sets. Most of the time, we can triangulate what we need to know via other sources.” In other words, the combination of data and AI algorithms create the possibility of new and more effective workarounds. For example, when diagnostic imaging is unavailable, an ever more accurately analyzed sample of blood or other body fluids might help with diagnosis. As a result, shifts in value creation are difficult to predict.

Building Competitive Advantage

Managers expect significant improvement in performance of current processes or products from AI. Many companies are focused on addressing those. However, mere improvement does not create a sustainable competitive advantage—when everyone finds the same efficiencies, only the baseline shifts. For AI to become a prominent feature in future strategies, companies must figure out how humans and computers can build off each other’s strengths to create competitive advantage. This is not easy: Companies need privileged access to data—which, as we’ve seen, many do not now have. They must learn how to make people and machines work effectively together—a capability relatively few Pioneers have at present. And they need to put in place flexible organizational structures, which mean cultural changes for both company and employee.

7.4 Critical Thinking and Collective Wisdom

The fast-changing business environment and workplaces demand an enhanced capability of project teams to withstand the disruptions and challenges to strategic implementation with critical thinking and find extraordinary ways to make advancements for desired outcomes. The most effective approach for making way forward is to prepare each team member with a habit of critical thinking.

A mindful thinking by all team members of a project may play miracles in finding solutions to any problem and impediment.

The following text has been adapted from Jain (2017c):

While information and technology were invented to make life easier and more comfortable, it has pushed people towards more actions. Amount of activity in the daily life has grown exponentially due to growing need for travel, communication and socialization.

See Figure 7.7 for behavioral developments.

Our behavioral development moves through the cycle of unconscious, conscious and subconscious where brain acclimatizes itself to the external world and creates a necessary action-feedback mechanism to provide requisite support to sustenance of life.

Conscious zone of mind is about less action and more reflection while subconscious mind is programmed for managing the action reaction cycle. While the conscious brain is about processing information, creating new knowledge and consumes more energy, subconscious brain is about automation, routine and speed. Thinking is a conscious brain activity and it is essential for the mind to move away from action to shift its focus from subconscious to conscious zone.

Thinking is a pre-requisite for breaking the action- reaction cycle. A new action will always require thinking and in the absence of conscious brain activity, we will continue on the cycle of old action- reaction. Thinking is also necessary for finding solution to a new problem or devising new actions. In the absence of thinking we will choose our actions from the repository of old actions stored in the subconscious mind.

A growing focus on instant action along with the increasing shortage of time due to plethora of activities has created a vicious circle which has taken the toll on the process of thinking. Many readers will challenge this assumption with the statistics about growing research, innovations and technology. But my observation is not about thinking as a job but is about thinking as routine. I am not referring to outsourcing of thinking but mentioning about thinking as an integral part of life.

You need to facilitate your projects team members to THINK while finding solutions to challenges and processing a task. “THINK” may mean strength, noted as follows:

 

T—Tasking-self for mindfulness (you cannot be mindful until you are focused on a defined task and its requirements)

H—Honest engagement (you are enthusiastically engaged)

I—Intelligent exploration (you are exclusively finding a resolution)

N—New horizon (out of box) (: leaving behind all baggage and keeping all options open)

K—Knowledge (you have a fair understanding of your task and its requirements)

The following text has been adapted from Jain (2017a):

Organization is an institutional management of systems and processes. Organizations aim to achieve the standardization of systems and processes so that output quality is maintained. The employees are expected to apply their brain to know and understand the systems and processes so that they can operate on them through subconscious mind. Thinking is not promoted for the simple reason that thinking creates newer possibilities and new possibilities may have a price tag.

Leading organizations have a dedicated R&D department who is delegated the job of thinking for the organization. R&D teams are expected to identify and suggest the innovative ways to develop new products, new processes, cut costs, improve quality or enhance output. Most of the employees in the other functions work on routines. The deviant thinking is discouraged and focus is given to compliance. Most employees feel the grudge that they are hired as players but treated as pawns.

Can we institutionalize thinking in an organization? The answer is yes. Google has been doing it successfully over the years where in each employee is allowed to work for 20 percent of his/her office time on work beyond their prescribed job. The organization has to allow time to think for each employee irrespective of the function or job. While 20 percent may sound too high a time allocation for thinking in a manufacturing organization, they can always start with graded allocation of thinking time.

The organization need to design spaces for thinking wherein employees can go and sit in sensory stimulation free environment. The employees need to be initiated on art of mindfulness and meditation. The organization should train their employees on critical thinking skill. Each function should have an incubator wherein new thinking are captured and integrated into organizational knowledge. This practice of thinking should not be output focused rather outcome driven.

There are numerous advantages of creating a thinking organization. First advantage will be that all the external and internal environmental factors impacting the organization will be captured in the most elaborate and effective manner. Secondly, it will allow the creative expression of the employee resulting into better job satisfaction and involvement. Thinking organization will lead to better R&D output due to collective thinking and participation of all internal stakeholders. Finally it will develop the requisite agility into the organizational systems and processes to manage the market forces.

Your present organizational effectiveness is a reflection of thinking done by few people of the organization. Just imagine if all the employees of your organization will start contributing to the thinking process, what will be the levels of your organizational effectiveness, success and growth. Do not confine thinking to the suggestion boxes in your organization; allow it to bloom in every job and every employee of organization.

You need to have a clarity on the bases of brain thinking processes elaborated in Figure7.8.

The following text has been adapted from Jain (2017b):

Many people consider critical thinking is an example of conscious brain activity. When I refer to Art of Thinking, I am not considering critical thinking in the ambit of conscious mind activity. Critical thinking is also a subconscious mind activity. Let me explain this with an example.

If I ask a question 2+2=? All of us will respond easily as 4. Why the answer appeared so simple? Is this question equally simple for a 1st standard student who is learning numbers and sums? Why for a 1st standard student, this answer was so tough? The answer to this question is that for us, 2+2 is a subconscious mind activity but for a 1st standard student, it was a conscious brain activity. We also learnt the same way and transformed the conscious brain activity into subconscious mind activity.

Now let us expand this understanding little further.

If 2+2=4, then how can you get 4 out of an equation? 99 percent of the participants in this exercise said 4=2+2. This is what we call, anchoring effect. The first statement 2+2 created an anchor on 4 in our mind and when I asked you about way to get 4, most said 2+2. This is an example of subconscious mind activity.

Now give a break to yourself and reply the question again; how can you get 4? Now with some effort you will start thinking and soon you will realize that there are infinite ways to get 4. My proposition is that if there were infinite possibilities of getting an answer, why our mind threw out only 2+2 at the first place? This is our subconscious mind activity and when you start thinking about ways to get 4 without any anchoring bias that will be a conscious brain activity.

The conscious thinking is about breaking yourself free from all the biases and anchors. Conscious thinking is not critical thinking because critical thinking also involves old anchors and assumptions. When we can think beyond those anchors and assumptions, then only we can think consciously. Conscious thinking is about objective thinking completely free from anchors, biases, beliefs and prejudices. Conscious thinking is about going beyond what is seen, heard and known.

Projects team with critical thinking at an individual level coupled with collective wisdom may play miracles in finding solutions to challenges for strategic implementation and advancement in the right direction.

Capture Collective Wisdom and Influence for Action

Knowledge is acquiring what you do not know, and wisdom is knowing what to do with what you already know.

Wisdom’s Display

Wisdom manifests as compassion. 

Collective wisdom is the source for continued success and advancement in the strategic direction.

On a more practical level, “You are wise to the extent that you can get yourself to do things you don’t like doing but know will result in happiness, and to refrain from doing what you like but know will result in pain or harm.” In other words, wisdom is displayed as skillful behavior.

How wise are you?

What path are you taking to realize your innate wisdom?

It is said that wisdom is both the beginning and the end of the path to an enlightened living. In the beginning, we take on a view based on a momentary experience of the vast, unbounded clarity and emptiness that is the basic ground of our existence or based on something we have read or heard. In the end, we realize the view as our natural state.

What Is Wisdom?

Wisdom is applying accurate knowledge, understanding, experience, insight, and good judgment to working and living. Wisdom is the ability to take appropriate actions at a given time.

The first Psalm says:

“Blessed are the man and woman who have grown beyond their greed 

And who have put an end to their hatred and no longer nourish illusions.

But they delight in the way things are and keep their hearts open, day and night.

They are like trees planted near flowing rivers which bear fruit when they are ready.

Their leaves will not wither. Everything they do will succeed.”

In that view, wisdom is going beyond greed, hatred, and delusion to an open-hearted acceptance of things as they are.

Thanissaro Bhikku, an expert in Buddhist thought, says, “For all the subtlety of his teachings, the Buddha had a simple test for measuring wisdom. You are wise, he said, to the extent that you can get yourself to do things you don’t like doing but know will result in happiness, and to refrain from doing what you like but know will result in pain or harm.”

Wisdom Is a Foundation for Skillful Living

All the world religions highlight wisdom as a critical factor in living a healthy and successful life. On a practical level, it is pretty obvious that wisdom, or objectively and experientially knowing how things are, is an important edge for successful living.

View and Intention

In Buddhism, there is an eightfold path to Nirvana. The path is divided into three parts: wisdom, skillful behavior, and meditation. The right view and the right intention are the elements that make up wisdom.

The right view is having a clear sense of the way things are, and the right intention is the commitment to go beyond one’s conditioning to unconditioned happiness.

The word “right” doesn’t mean right as opposed to wrong but instead it refers to a view that fully describes and agrees with things as they are. It is an objective view as opposed to one that is distorted by habits and beliefs. It is said that the Buddha advised that if you wish to experience Nirvana, you must free yourself from attachment, including attachment to fixed views and philosophical and religious beliefs. Where knowledge is intellectual, wisdom is experiential. A person can have a great deal of knowledge and not be wise.

Wisdom is the opposite of ignorance. Wisdom enables skillful living and results in a display of compassion and loving kindness, free of the stress that comes from a distorted view. Meditation is a means for cultivating and realizing wisdom.

Right View

So what exactly is an undistorted, complete view?

From a Buddhist perspective, it is a view that understands our ability to awaken to the recognition that everything is impermanent (everything is subject to change), that un-satisfactoriness is a natural part of life (don’t expect everything to always work out the way you want it), and that everything results from an ever-changing stream of causes and conditions. It is a view that understands that unnecessary suffering, in all its forms, from minor anxiety and disappointment to severe depression and anger, is caused by wanting things to be different than they can be.

Observe objectively the world around you and your inner world of thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations, and you will see that nothing lasts forever. Mountains crumble, everything changes. Since everything changes and we like the things we like to stay the same, there is a degree of un-satisfactoriness in our lives. We have hopes and fears and our hopes are often unrealized while our fears materialize.

Because we want things to be different than they can be and things are impermanent and conditions constantly change, we are unnecessarily stressed. As wisdom dawns, there is less clinging to the things we can’t keep and less pushing away the things we don’t like. As wisdom matures, these causes of our negative experience dissolve until we are left with unconditioned happiness born of the acceptance of things as they are.

If you are convinced by your own experience that everything is impermanent and the result of a continuous flow of causes and conditions, it is likely that you will not cling to things you cannot keep and push away things you cannot avoid. Acceptance becomes a natural quality of your life.

Acceptance Does Not Mean Passivity

Wisdom and acceptance do not mean that you have to passively stand by and watch as bad things happen. The right view includes the recognition that you are responsible for your action and inaction. You cannot change the past or the present moment. You can change your attitude and you can influence the future through what you think, say, and do.

Wise beings are activists. They realize that it is their responsibility to manifest their wisdom as loving kindness and compassion. Positive action can take many forms. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi transformed the wisdom of peace and freedom for all beings into political action. Nelson Mandela transformed the wisdom of forgiveness into policies that saved South Africa from a revenge-fueled bloodbath.

Wisdom recognizes that through skillful effort you go beyond conditioning to spontaneity.

Becoming Wise

How can you become wise? You can use your intellect, your devotion, your contact with realized beings, and/or your immediate experience in meditation.

Intellectual knowledge is transformed into wisdom through study, reflection, and meditation with the intention to awaken to reality.

Wisdom can arise when you lose yourself in devotion or when you are spontaneously awakened through contact with a realized being or by coming in contact with a prayer, poem, or song that cuts through the illusion of conditioned thinking and results in an experience of things just as they are. You can have a spontaneous experience and realize a complete and accurate view in that moment.

Study involves reading, listening, and observing your inner process and your surroundings. You intellectually learn about how things are and how things can be.

Reflection allows refining this knowledge and integrating it into your thinking process by assessing it.

Meditation is experiential. It gives the experience of spaciousness and serenity as well as the clear knowing that everything is impermanent and that your clinging and pushing away are unnecessary causes of your anxiety, anger, and sadness. Through meditation, as through the path of devotion, there can be the experience of insight that by itself can result in wisdom.

A teacher can point out the experience of an awakened mind.

Once there has been an experience or some sense of the difference between wisdom and ignorance, that experience can be a touchstone. Remembering it over and over again, as a reminder to not be caught up in the delusion of conditioned living, true wisdom dawns.

Summary

Organizational management needs focus on controllable matters that are the most important. Learn to achieve synergy for advancement in a strategic direction that requires strong skills in four areas: playing the role of connector, attracting diverse talent, modeling collaboration at the top, and showing a strong hand to keep teams from getting mired in debate. It starts from critical thinking.

The challenges of digital economy are the awakening fact of life that needs to be understood and captured for increasing benefits as the future lies there.

The combination of AI, robotics, and humans for increased efficiency is becoming the need of the day and organizations are required to manage workplaces with reality becoming a daylight fact.

Project teams are required to enhance their competence with critical thinking coupled with collective wisdom for pursuance of fast actions on problem solving.

References

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Bersin, J. 2017. “AI, Robotics and Cognitive Computing are Changing Business Faster than You Thought.” http://joshbersin.com/2017/03/ai-robotics-and-cognitive-computing-are-changing-business-faster-than-you-thought/

David, S. and C. Congleton. 2013. “Emotional Agility.” https://hbr.org/2013/11/emotional-agility

Jain, R. 2017a. “Create a Thinking Organization.”https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/you-thinking-organization-rakesh-jain/

Jain, R. 2017b.“Is Critical Thinking a Conscious Brain Activity?” https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/critical-thinking-conscious-brain-activity-rakesh-jain/

Jain, R. 2017c. “The Forsaken Art of Thinking.”https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/forsaken-art-thinking-rakesh-jain/

Lindzon, J. 2017. “How AI Is Changing the Way Companies Are Organized.” https://www.fastcompany.com/3068492/how-ai-is-changing-the-way-companies-are-organized

Deloitte’s, 2017. Human Capital Trends Report.

Ransbotham, S., D. Kiron, P. Gerbert, and M. Reeves. 2017. “Reshaping Business with Artificial Intelligence”, MIT Sloan Research Report. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/offers-ai2017/