Op_Pros: Achieving Singularity...

Our future depends on our ability to create new designs, new prototypes and then quickly deliver these to the end users on the front lines.

Author Peter Thiel in his book “Zero to One” articulates the challenge of our future. His insights are the modern day relevancy we all desperately need.

Stagnation or Singularity. What will be your destiny?

Economic competition and our future trends towards massive global disruptions requires our most vital organizations to find singular ways to improve and to discover “New”.

Our most coveted purpose has always brought us a daily motivation to excel. To think. To create. To test. To learn. To repeat.

A high risk mission that shall bring us so much closer to seeking out the real tasks that are critical to our collective future.

What emerging skills will be continuously required by humans to develop and test our new designs, prototypes and inventions?

How might we develop new tools and system methods to assist us along the challenging journey?

"Your particular group of “Operational Professionals” await the next challenges, new found problem-sets and purposeful tasks towards building our resilient futures."

Your specialized team shall assemble according to subject-matter-expertise that is focused on solving the true problem-set, integrated with specific geography experience where the prototype will be tested.

Over-The-Horizon (OTH) innovation within the walls of the historical institution of origin rarely is successful.

Our story truly begins when your “Operational Professionals” engage together beyond the organizational walls, away from the traditional rule-sets and together using the innovative new methods, real-time strategy and tactics to now move from “Zero to One”.

Your mission success will continuously rely upon the magnitude of your integrated skill-sets and relevant accuracy of the real-time information discovery.

The outcomes from obtaining your objectives and solving the problems identified will accelerate your abilities to find “New”.  To learn together as a unified team. To start the LOOP all over again with new insights and the metrics for future success.

What important truth, do “Very Few” people agree with you on?

Look beyond the near wall and into the far distance to imagine what you will achieve together…

Mechanisms: For Continuous Risk Monitoring...

One of the systemic problems at large institutions including organizations like your own Fortune 500 Global company is keeping your finger on the pulse of "Risk Indicators".

Unfortunately for SVP's and other executives in the corporate hierarchy, your middle managers are creating the layer that impedes the best "Early Warning System" you may have at your disposal.

When problems surface on the front line or over in the "Cube City" in some Telephone Call or Information center on the other side of the globe, or across your new "Work-From-Home" (WFH) team, the normal agenda is for the employee to go to their direct supervisor to raise the "Red Flag" or disclose the incident. Perhaps the first behavioral response by the Middle Manager is to keep it quiet. Fix it before anyone else finds out. Keep it under wraps until damage control can be implemented.

When you are the Head of Enterprise Risk Management, you need mechanisms to bypass and eradicate the barrier holding your intelligence, incidents and overall hunches for ransom. There is no magic system or process that will solve it all. Yet, the only way to attempt at breaking through this layer of social and organizational dysfunction is to circumvent it.

A continuous risk monitoring system has to be implemented and operating anonymously 24/7 in concert with the Security Operations Center (SOC) if the upper echelons of executive management are ever going to "Feel the Pulse" of risk hotspots in the company.

These hotspots translate into true "Risk Indicators" from the sources themselves, people who know what's going wrong and know the ground truth. An internal Continuous Risk Monitoring System (CRMS) is an automated human feedback and problem identification mechanism for detecting insider risks. It allows leaders of large organizations to quickly identify problems and incidents of all kinds in their company. Call it a sophisticated whistle-blower system or even suggestion box but that is exactly what it is, on steroids.

The ideal CRMS system would emulate communication patterns in small groups which is often a major ingredient in successful teams. It would also run on the existing computers and networks of the organization or from home by logging in via an internal VPN. The soldiers on the front line know what is going on far sooner than the commanders in the Joint Operations Center just as the employee or supplier does and they need a way to communicate the issue, concern or threat in a rapid and efficient manner.

"The system provides the executives with instant or trend based intel that is actionable. It provides the "Insight" as well as the pertinent facts that you need to make more quick effective decisions."

Think about how long it takes for data and information to percolate and bubble up from the places in your organization that are considered "Current Risk Hot Spots". The point is that for far too long we have been playing the old telephone game.

You know, the one that you played as a kid sitting around the kitchen table or on the floor in a circle. One person starts and whispers into the ear of the person to there right. Just a sentence or two. By the time the message gets around to the 3rd or 4th person, now the data is dramatically different than the original. It's been interpreted, edited and sanitized.

Walk down and visit the person who is in charge of the anonymous 800# or “electronic suggestion box” or perhaps the official whistle-blower program at your organization.

Ask them for an activity log. Ask yourself how you could get this mechanism to perform better and then work with your front line to develop something that middle management can't filter, change or delete. That is when you will be well on your way to getting TrustDecisions in real time…

Skills of Purpose: Active Learning in Life...

As a new dawn sun rises above the horizon across your own neighborhood in America, what is on your agenda today?

Are you living and working in survival mode? Wondering what to do next, as you care for others who are unable or too young or too old?

How much time will you devote to yourself in the next 24 hours or next week? Will you be learning a new skill, practicing a skill learned long ago or teaching your professional skills to someone else who will truly benefit?

skill noun

Definition of skill

1a : the ability to use one's knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance

b : dexterity or coordination especially in the execution of learned physical tasks

2 : a learned power of doing something competently : a developed aptitude or ability

Your ambition to learn a new skill or practice one that you learned long ago is a lost art.

In 2022, many neophytes believe that streaming YouTube or sitting quietly in a classroom, while a person in the front of the room presents their content and opinions to attempt to educate you, is the answer.

Skill building is so very different. It is proactive and the person in the course is actively “Doing” and practicing what is being demonstrated and taught by the instructors.

Skill building requires a professional instructor who not only has many years of “Doing” the same set of skills, yet also has the real ability to transfer those skills to others by utilizing their proven and active methodology.

Think about it. How did you learn your most precious and valuable skills in life? Who was your most favorite instructor? Why?

If you ever found yourself learning your new skills in the first few decades of your life at a professional School, an Institute, an Academy or on the Farm, you truly understand what active learning and true skill building is really all about.

You probably have some visible indicators of how you learned the wrong way to execute your new found skill.

You have now decided to continue to practice your new valuable skills. You will apply them to your work or profession and even will share what you have learned over decades with those others on your team who are now eager to learn.

How might you provide these same life skills to others you truly care about?

This task will not be easy and will require your devoted time and resources to be effective.

"Active learning" is so much more time intensive and requires a methodology that is full of practice, observation and then even more practice.

If you find yourself sitting in the audience, looking at a screen and trying to listen, it could be so different and so much more rewarding.

You could be out there learning new life skills, that you will then quickly apply in the City, the County or the Country of your choice.

To make a real difference and with a true purpose.

On the way there, thank your instructor... Onward!