Saturday, December 13, 2014

A “Programmable” Mind

The programmable mind presents such learning agility, the willingness and ability to learn, delearn, and re-learn all the times.


Today’s digital workforce must have such agility to adapt to the changes. If you go deep,  you will find that the way you think, the way you react , the way you act .....is all due to the habits which got formed by your repeatedly thinking, feeling or doing. Once you agree to this, then by changing your habits which can be called as programming in the language of computers you will change - your habits (programs ) and this can change the way of your thinking as well. However, what're the characteristics of a programmable mind, and how to cultivate the sets of digital habits for riding above the digital learning curves.   



Learning agility: The rapidly changing business climate makes the digital talent feel like to live in the tropical jungle, facing many attacks, in the danger of getting dismissed. How should they survive and thrive in such a dynamic environment? The programmable mind presents such learning agility, the willingness and ability to learn and then apply those lessons to succeed in new situations. Leaders and digital talent who are learning agile continuously seek new challenges, solicit direct feedback, self-reflect, self-motivated, and get jobs done resourcefully.


Mental Agility: The talent with a programmable mind has such ability to examine problems in unconventional ways. They see unique patterns and make fresh connections that others overlook. To embrace mental agility, they need to become critical and creative thinker at the same time, to practice “de-learning’ and “re-learning”, the talent with programmable mind with diversified experiences such as cross-functional, cross-industrial and cross-cultural background can also connect dots to approach problems with fresh thinking and unique ways.


Self-Awareness: The talent with a programmable mind shall have such self-awareness to which an individual knows his or her true strengths and weaknesses. Through self-reflection, the talent with programmable mind may understand self-best: are you  a strategist or techie; are you an analytic expert or a synthetic thinker; are you a visionary or a solutionary., etc. at most of circumstances, the talent with programmable mind feel comfortable to wear a couple of hats, take different actions in varying situations. The talent with a programmable mind can focus on big picture, but also master some significant details in which business can take unique advantage to compete for the long term.


People Agility: Communication is one of the critical factors to decide the talent with programmable minds’ effectiveness, being multilinguistic is surely helpful, more importantly, a skilled communicator who can work with diverse types of people. As they need to master all styles of conversations to develop situational wisdom and influential competency. The bad communication syndrome may include such as: getting lost in translation or getting distracted in technical details, the wrong context & KPIs for the different audience, or lack of business focus., etc. Programming is both art and science, a talent with a programmable mind can master creative communication with logic.

Change Agility: Today’s business leaders and digital professionals with a programmable mind like to experiment and feel comfortable with change. They need to get a new set of skills such as leadership, critical thinking, creativity, ethics, global perspective, and cultural intelligence. The other key skills include innovating, dealing with situations that you have not dealt with before, possessing the confidence and the experience to be entrepreneurial. You have to be able to deal with other cultures and situations you’re not familiar with. So the talent with programmable minds can move out of their comfort zone, take risks, learn from mistakes, and create the environment for innovation and creativity, reward risks, invest in new revenue-generating initiatives. They will be walking the talk- showing the team in a very personal manner that it is imperative to cultivate the culture of learning and stay on top of digital advancements. It means the talent with change agility continually learn, bend, and flex as their work climate changed.


Result Agility: at the age of digitization, experiment on innovation, delivering the result at the first-time situation will be more frequent than ever, the talent with the programmable mind, can adopt agile methodology and deliver results in challenging first-time situations. Learning agility is even more critical for the executives at larger enterprises such as Fortune 500, as they are the one anchoring big ship towards the right direction timely, making an influence on macroeconomic climate, exemplifying the positive culture for our society.  


Hence, the talent with such a programmable mind is invaluable for business’s growth and digital transformation, because they are curious to experiment, resilient to failure; agile to change, creative to think alternatives and deliver results in challenging the first-time situation more frequently.  

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