Monthly Archives: November 2015

Human Resource is about people. It is less so about managing people, but truly desiring to support and enable relevant market skills and whole-being development. It took me a long time to figure out why a status-conscious or rank-conscious or even a performance-based paradigm would not sustain. The heart of humanity is one. Each of us is unique and the same. So when we enter a place to participate, we necessarily anticipate to belong, in equal standing. And in trust, of each other, for one another.

Equality is not about uniformity. Equality is about appreciating, valuing and enjoying the differences. It is more like jazz. True harmony is when each can be, yet we are whole, and in unison.

It only suddenly occurred to me that the heart of empowerment is simply about believing. And again, patience and inner patience.

Patience is from a deep place of believing, never from a place of judgment or measure or  dogma or a predetermined ideology about perfection or rebellion.

It dawned upon me that the inner patience is really about holding oneself: self-control. Executive function is about emotional regulation as much as making choices, or decision-making, and responsible action. The three go hand in hand.

Emotional regulation isn’t about suppression or denial or mastery of emotions. It is much more basic, simple and humbling than that. Emotional regulation is about honesty and maturity. Honesty about our feelings, especially the negative feelings, and to sit with each of our feelings, until they pass. It is to be able to embrace our insecurities and vulnerabilities with compassion and love.

Making choices isn’t really about making a choice unless one is calm. There is a whole world of difference between a momentary reaction and a response, typically for life.

Knee jerk reactions are but that. They tend to be fight or flight. Or freeze in arguments, blaming and scapegoating. Or daydreams, unable to engage reality. But they don’t actually solve anything. They solve surface perturbations, but they don’t address the heart of the discordant. Usually, the heart of why a space or a community is not working is actual disharmony itself or a perception of disharmony.

Conflicts and contradictions are part of day-to-day living. When we honestly examine and truly work through tangles and struggles without abandonment is when we truly transcend as a community truly faithful to each other and to global peace. It is only then that we truly innovate and grow our humanity in our work and living spaces.

So, to re-begin looking at Human Resource is to look at oneself, with deep honesty, generosity, love and respect. And yes, belief.

Strategy is an interesting idea. I have wondered for a long time what is the divide – between strategy and strategy execution, between management and staff, between mission and processes, between budget and actual, between shareholders and the people who make up the corporation. And so on. I wonder if anyone notices that life is real time. And that every moment isn’t at all repeatable. What is then the pragmatic or doable strategy to navigate this reality? I come down to consistency. Every living moment is then an embodiment of your entire reason or purpose of existence – mission, vision, strategy, strategy execution, enterprise performance management, enterprise resource planning & processing. It is an integration of all that you are. What then is this snapshot or point of coherence that is at once meaningful, harmonious and fruitful for each of the member of the common participation – be it in an enterprise, a corporation, an organisation, a community? That to me is the deep meaning of purpose. And since everyone is a human person, I would dare venture that ultimately, it is about cultivating, scaffolding, and growing humanity. And the process is about patience and inner patience. And a word that is so seldom breathed in corporate circles: love.

It was very strange. I almost got confused between strategy and sustainability. Perhaps there really isn’t any difference. The strategy, any strategy, afterall, ultimately, is to sustain, isn’t it? If you don’t sustain, you are out of a business, a job, a mission, an application of an idea or purpose or reason, and well, maybe, a planet. So, I find it quite intriguing that we spend so much and so much time about processes, or even markets, when actually the smart question, or the only question, is about transformation towards collective sustainability. How do you transform in order to sustain the whole, so that the part still has a part to participate in?  So isn’t sustainability about the earth, people collaborating, cooperating and sharing and discovering greatness – within and for the whole. It is the simultaneity of the two, the parts and the whole. It is about understanding, appreciating, and enabling our individual and collective roles and responsibilities to come to a point of recognition that resolving this paradox is simply this: the part is the whole. That I am a part of you and that you are a part of me. That, in fact, “I” am “you” and “you” are “me”. That it is not possible to defeat the other without defeating ourselves. That it is only possible to sustain the other, in order to sustain ourselves. So, sustainability comes down to this. To take care of the other, as we would, ourselves. We make so many jigsaw puzzles, cutting the one picture into so many parts, but the picture is right under our noses. It is the divides that divide us; however, we cut it. Supposing we focus on bridging the separations. Separations are the most difficult to bridge. That’s why the gap has arisen in the first place. But suppose we say to ourselves, “Let’s bridge the islands.” What happens? We sustain. We don’t break or fall apart.

The enterprise risk management framework is reduced to this acronym GRRRTAL. Yes it is a frustrating exercise but well worth the self-examination, facilitation and timely responses. In short, it is about:

G – Goals

3Rs – Risk Appetite, Risk Categories, Rank Risks

4Ts – Tolerate, Transfer, Treat, Terminate

A – Take Action

L – Learning

Again, it isn’t a legalistic, checklist exercise. It is truly knowing what you and your business, enterprise, organisation, community is about, and coming together to discuss areas of vulnerabilities. Most importantly, it is about learning, to live in community – with compassion, resilience, tenacity, and openness.

I don’t know why, but I begin with Corporate Governance. Governance isn’t at all about legalism. It is about culture. I hold just three principles amidst navigating all the codes. It is this:

1. Integrity
2. Competence
3. Trust.

And it is held by every single person in the organisation, corporately structured or otherwise. It is held by each person in the community as an internal value. That is actually the deep work. No amount of auditing and disclosure can uphold governance. It has to be intrinsic in every individual participating in the space.

Nevertheless, the trend is encouraging. The scaffolding in a direction towards global corporate responsibility is heartwarming to observe, witness, and participate in.