Creative decision making

I recently did a workshop on Creative decision making. Since i train in the area of,"Innovation and creativity",this workshop was an eye opener from the point of view of application of creativity in the decision making process.
Creative decision making is a powerful competency for everyone who wants to grasp opportunities and continuously grow.
What is a creative decision?
A creative decision is a decision which has not been taken earlier,which overcomes a critical limiting factor.
Thus,Rana Pratap can be considered to be a creative decision maker because he had to overcome the limitation of a small army while facing a considerably larger army.

Development of Managerial Competencies

The no. of competencies competing to be in the framework of managerial effectiveness are so many that it becomes difficult to choose as t which competencies should be the focus of development.
I recently conducted a workshop on,"Managerial Effectiveness" for a client of mine.The process of interacting with professionals with considerable experience is very rewarding in the sense that new insights keep on hitting you.
One of my takeaways as a trainer was that the key managerial competencies that impact managerial effectiveness are motivation,organizing,self-analysis and performance management.
These competency clusters have a stamp of validity because they passed the acid judgemental test of experienced professional managers and technologists.
Motivation has become a cliched term.Hence,it is interpreted in so many different ways and may result in yawns.However,as soon as we integrate the emotional competence with it,it develops new potential.
Organizing is a barely understood competency,though without managerial effectiveness is impossible.The two competencies tha i found mot potent in this competency cluster are activity-responsibility-time maps and 5S.
Under self-analysis the potent sub-competencies are that of appreciative inquiry,self-healing and managing insecurity.When professional do not get the promotion that they so badly wanted emotional scars come into existence.If the professional does not heal these emotional scars,impact on performance is bound to happen.
Performance as a competency cluster consists of the competencies of,"Tapping Talent" and ,"Vision".Vision is an energy hook but vision without the skills of tapping team talent results in frustration and failure.

Creating and Sustaining competitive advantage

Creating and sustaining a competitive advantage is one of the primary requirements for the survival and the growth of an organization.
Organizations are able to create and sustain a competitive advantage if they able to continuously enhance the value that they give to their customers.Value refers to benefits divided by costs.
This learning yields a few insights.
In order to enhance benefits or to reduce costs innovation is an essential requirement.Thus innovation and competitive advantage are inextricably linked.Organizations that fail to innovate lose their competitive advantage over a period of time.
Without a strategy for creating a competitive advantage organizations are bound to go down.Thus ,it would be entirely correct to conclude that without an innovation strategy ,organizations are bound to decline.
How many organizations consciously strive for innovation in order to continuously create new competitive advantages?

Appreciative inquiry

Appreciative inquiry is a highly underutilized OD intervention.It is extremely powerful in the process of triggering postive change in an organization.
The sheer engagement in the process of appreciative inquiry has a tendency to unleash positive change. The first stage of Appreciative inquiry i.e.,"Discover phase" has a powerful motivating impact on anybody who undertakes it.The process of sharing and consolidating organizational high point stories and extracting the positive core of the organization through them creates an organizational culture of achievement.
Moreover,the involvement of multiple personnel in the ,"Dream Phase"of appreciative inquiry has a tendency to develop a develop a shared direction and a future for the organization.It tends to resolve a lot of decision making dilemmas.
On implementing,"Appreciaitive nquiry" for a software organization,i found that the sharing of high point stories and their publication became a highly motivating factor for all organizational personnel.

Leveraging technology in IR

During my discussion with participants of a training program ,i came to know about a case of,"Leveraging technology in "IR".
One particular unit was having a major strike.Hence there was complete breakdown of communication between management and the workers.The management started communicating with the workers through cable TV.Continuous communication was flashed into the hoes of the workers.
This communication was read by the families and children of the workers.This created an opinion at the worker family level which influenced the workers to call off the strike.
This case brings forth the learning that the general disassociation of technology with IR is misplaced.Technology can be leeraged for generating innovations in IR too.
Another cascading learning of this case is that the we have just about scratched the surface in the area of ,"Leveraging technology"for generating innovations in different functional areas.

Leveraging technology in HR

In a recently concluded workshop on,"Generating innovations in HR",I have experienced new insights into the dynamics of innovation and its potential in different functions.

Though i had experienced the power of leveraging technological shifts,but its utility in the HR function had not been experienced.When we applied this approach to generating innovations in the sub-functions of HR,to my surprise,potent innovation ideas began to flow.It seems that systematic scanning of the technology shifts and their application to the HR function just does not happen.Hence,enormous potential and possibility does not get tapped.

Moreover,the HR innovations generated have a greater probability of success in comparison to innovations generated from scratch,because the new technology has already been tried and tested for new value.

Even technology shifts such as blogs and bluetooth have the capacity to add significant new value to the HR function.Blogs make the dream of a learing organization,possible and bluetooth enables the delivery of instruction design without the trainer being glued to the laptop.

Generating innovations in HR

I conducted a program for Power HR Forum on,"Innovations in HR".There were participants from different power companies.
Somehow there is an element of skepticism about the application of the term innovation to HR. In the general perception,Innovation is linked to product or process innovations.
However,as the workshop progressed and we applied innovation tools to different HR sub-functions as well as the HR function itself,the doubts disappeared.The doubts were replaced by a new found confidence in themselves ,their function and its capability to stand out in the organizational setting.
One of the dominant themes that emerged was ,"The contribution of HR is invisible in most organizations.If we want to be visible there is no option but to innovate."

It is only through innovation that the profession will grow.If we continue to do the same things as we have done in the past,we are bound to decline and go into oblivion.
The application of innovation tools to the different HR sub-functions was an eye opener for most participants.Where earlier they saw road blocks ,now they could see possibilities and potent innovation ideas.
In all, 25 potent innovation ideas in different HR functions were generated
It was personally fulfilling experience for me.