There is a song by Dan Fogelberg called “The Leader of the Band.” One of the verses goes like this: My brothers’ lives were Different For they heard another call One went to Chicago And the other to St. Paul And I’m in Colorado When I’m not in some hotel Living out this life I’ve
A parent in the school principal’s office was inquiring after her son. “Is he trying?” she asked expectantly. The principal smiled at her sardonically, “Ma’am, your son is the most trying boy in the school.” In the Armed Services of any nation, Training Safety Regulations (TSR) or their equivalent ensure that no harm comes to
George Orwell’s Animal Farm springs immediately to mind. Look it up if you don’t know the story. What started out as a sort of odyssey towards a “new normal” for the animals lost its bearings and turned from the glorious liberty of Animal Farm back to the dreadful drudgery of Manor Farm. It was as
States, organizations, large corporate entities, medium size companies, perhaps even smaller businesses, are all afflicted by an almost uncontrollable tropism towards exercising more and more control, enacting more and more laws and regulations, producing more and more Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and so forth. They can’t help it. That’s how they are. Therefore, stop blaming
“It’s ONLY an exercise! No need to get so serious about it!” Heard that sort of thing before? Ever said it yourself? How do you respond if you hear such a phrase, or smell the same attitude in the air? I get extremely irritated, my trigger finger starts to twitch, and I start reaching for
The Chinese character romanized as Tao or Dao means “The Way”. It came to my mind this morning and the phrase “Triggers And Overrides” appeared before me. Triggers are of course basic, natural, archetypal responses to thoughts about discernible events. Emotions are triggered by the thoughts, spawning more thoughts and actions including speech, physiological and
How do you respond to criticisms or to negative feedback? Or to challenges and “hard questions, for that matter? Do you slink away, disappear into the carpet, stutter apologies profusely and crawl away to lick wounds in some cave? No? Oh, you go toe-to-toe with your denigrator and give back as good as you got?
“Don’t work hard, work smart.” “You have to work hard to get ahead.” “Lazy people are more likely to become successful.” “Multiple Streams of Income.” “Make Money with No Money.” Do those statements sound familiar? Do you swear by any of them? Perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you believe in the quality of Diligence and have
This is a quote taken from Lao Zi, and he is of course the founder of the Taoist persuasion. There are a great many other quotes attributed to him, of course, and he is also known as the author, by and large, of the “Tao Te Ching”, which is the basic text of Taoism. Well,
Yes, Singapore’s Foreign Worker Problem, which really isn’t a Foreign Worker Problem at all, but a Fallacy Of Entitlement Problem, and which happens to be our biggest FOE, the enemy of our continued success. Yet another round of discussions, debates, assertions, suggestions and other uselessly sanctimonious vows to improve the lot of Foreign Workers, whether
Many governments around the world are acting to protect jobs, to varying degrees of success, that I can see. Protecting jobs is laudable and necessary, especially in times like these, during a pandemic. When you think about it, it’s actually throwing the spotlight on something many governments, corporations and companies have been trying to do,
I saw this on LinkedIn’s “Today’s news and views” column just now. Does the farm industry need workers only now? Hasn’t there been a shortage of farm workers, just like healthcare workers, even from more “agrarian” times? And, speaking of “agrarian”, I have lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people, whether in
I was once asked to deliver a talk to some undergraduates on “How to Ace the Interview”. I told the person who asked me to do it that I don’t focus on “Acing the interview” but I focus on “Acing Yourself”. I think the undergrads liked the talk, and there was a line of students
I was passing someone talking on his cellphone and heard the phrase “…but I’m not an expert, so I’ll leave it to the experts…” Having some of my own business to mind, that’s all I remember hearing before I was out of earshot. We’ve all heard this being said in one form or other and
When we read books or attend courses or learn a thing or two from the sagely erudite, have you ever been confused by apparent contradictions from the same source? What about apparent contradictions from similar but different sources? Take these four passages, three from “The Illustrated Art of War” and one from “Genghis Khan and
Translators have always been in demand because there are many languages in the world, and we all desire to trade and raise our value, or riches, together. That is our espoused view. The truth is that we wish for everyone to grow richer, but we wish that we ourselves will grow richer faster than everyone
Transcript, slightly edited. I’m Elijah Lim. The poster that you saw at the beginning of this video is pretty typical of posters that have been going around for the longest time and which say things like if Plan A fails don’t worry there are 25 other letters in the alphabet and of course the poster
Everybody loves sales? We should all bargain for what we want to buy? How about waiting for next season’s sale? All of us love such things, or so we are told, or so we have been trained. Of course, no one wants to pay too much for anything. After all, it’s our hard-earned money, isn’t
Service Excellence means Do What You Said You Would Do. It’s NOT Service Recovery, either!
Some years ago, someone told me of a new way of teaching students at a certain establishment. There would be no textbooks and very few lectures. Students were to deliver presentations at the end of each day, and the lecturer would then summarise and give inputs as well as grade each student’s work for the
I was reading about Brexit and Charles de Gaulle’s Last Laugh on Geopolitical Futures when this came to my mind. George Friedman talks extensively about the “crisis of the exporters” which basically says that the seller is actually slave to the buyer. In other words, if your buyer can’t buy, you’re in trouble if your
Yes, with a question mark. Not being an American, I have never paid much attention to Black Friday. I never thought it would figure much in Singapore, but it apparently has to some degree. Today’s local newspaper had a four-page spread featuring Black Friday sales at Robinsons. It caught my eye because Robinsons started out
In class this morning, I told the participants something they have seldom, if ever, heard. That is, we need to learn from our successes. Yes, I know that we have all been admonished by the poster people that we don’t learn from successes, we learn from failures. Yes, I get that, and that is obviously
Most of us hear about not staying in our comfort zone, but to move out and try whatever it is we’re uncomfortable with. There is truth in that, of course. Just remember that something which doesn’t portray the whole truth isn’t truth, it’s deception. And what is deception? Get this – 99% truth! I’ve already
I’ve had quite enough of being told to “Go down to their level.” Stop this nonsense. The only reason you go down to “their” level is to raise them up to yours. And the only reason you raise them up to your level is to raise them higher than yourself. One of my favourite quotes
Are you worth your salt? Well, ARE you? Do you receive your salary, your pay, your commission, your fee, with great satisfaction, knowing that you have delivered much more than the pittance you received? I hope you do. As one wise man once said “There are two tragedies in life. The first is not getting
Google yielded 1.2 million results when I typed “talent shortage” just before writing this post. The IT sector is currently complaining about a “shortage of tech talent” which, even if available, is seen to be “expensive.” Really? What are all our ICT graduates doing, then? When I actually started reading a few posts and articles
Confused? Really? There used to be a television series called “Lost in Space” which first aired in the mid-1960s. One of the characters was the “B-9, Class M-3 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot” usually known only as “Robot.” The Robot is memorable for two phrases: “Danger, Will Robinson!” and “Does not compute!” It is
In Cold Blood? We have a great penchant for putting the cart before the horse. The movers and shakers of this world need to recognize that we have to turn the world right side up, not upside down! Buyers and sellers need to understand that we have a great need to buy and sell in
Oxymorons “Make it relevant for your audience”, “It should be something my staff can relate to” and now “It must be IT-related.” Don’t you just love oxymorons? Isn’t it so significant that the word “moron” is embedded in “oxymoron”? The word had its origins as a technical word to describe “adult with a mental age
SOS – Supply Of Supplication Supplicants the world over beam their SOS signals every day. They ask for love, appreciation, fulfillment, excitement, purpose, gratification and so forth. This is besides the need for air, water and food so they can go on living. Increasingly, wants disguised as needs are also broadcast as SOS. We call this
Why a Post about M&As? I have read many posts and articles about Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As). There are more than a few forms of M&As. You can read more about them on Investopedia and elsewhere. I hope to briefly show here how the three “Whats” of “What?”, “So What?” and “Now What?” can be asked
Acquisition The desire for gain is one of the two basic motivations we humans have. The fear of loss is the other one. This desire for gain is not just for material things. It can be the adulation of others, having deep friendships or perhaps simply having the ability to enjoy the wonders of Nature.
POS. Point Of Sale. POS stands for, among other things, Point Of Sale. Although narrowly defined as “The place where a retail transaction is carried out”, I would like to include here that it means everything surrounding the moment the sale is made. It includes the buyer, the seller, the goods and/ or services provided,
Maturity – A Person of Substance Do you aspire to maturity? Would that mean being matronly? Or would it mean being middle-aged, with hints of grey appearing already? Given a choice, would you want to be mature? Or would you want to keep playing the Peter Pan card of eternal youth? Does being mature mean
Inanities How often have you read a report about once-great entities now gone to the dogs? Have you noticed how often those entities are described as being “Victims of their own success”? What does that mean? I don’t know, do you? How do companies become “Victims of their own success”? After all, if your success
Playing to Strengths. Indeed. The Character First! definition of Truthfulness is Earning future trust by accurately reporting past facts. Various gurus would have told you by now that you need to be playing to strengths and not correcting weaknesses. Of course, they are right. How right? Let’s take a closer look, shall we? We are told
Of Babies and Bathwater “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” is a very useful adage to keep in mind. I wrote some time ago about “Silos? Or Synapses?” In that post I emphasized that we ought to think in terms of synapses rather than silos. Lately, I’ve been seeing many posts about abolishing silos
Get the picture? Yes! So what? Make a movie! A picture paints a thousand words, so they say. If that’s the case, would it be true to say that a movie shows a thousand pictures? With audio thrown in, perhaps? It’s been said that if we change our words, we will change our world. Well,
There’s an app for that! There certainly is! With probably a few million apps in both the Apple and Android Play stores, people are either spoilt for choice or freeze. There are apps for any number of reasons. Play a game. Order something and have it delivered to your home or office. Ask for directions to
Speakers Love Speaking? I get bored when I listen to many other people speaking as well. Few speakers can actually capture my attention these days. Why do I get bored listening to myself speaking? Does the same thing happen to you? Do you get bored listening to yourself? Wait a minute, aren’t speakers supposed to love
Sharing and Giving IS Caring! I attended an interesting talk on “The Socially Savvy Organization” organized by the Direct Marketing Association of Singapore (DMAS) on 30 Jun 2016. Former CEO of Vocanic, Ian McKee, shared about the power of relationships and permissions-based postures in marketing. The point that social media is for sharing, not selling,
“Give me liberty, or give me death!” ~ Patrick Henry Clarity is greatly liberating, in the sense that decisiveness is enhanced by it. Since liberty is not the right to do as we like, but the freedom to do as we ought, then being clear how our convictions inform our actions opens up many degrees
This is the way we do things here, we do things here, we do things here… It seems that there is a method to the madness, after all. Following a template ostensibly forged by older and much wiser heads since antiquity guarantees success, does it not? Of course it does! Our modus operandi, the method we
Very Busy “But I’m very busy,” you exclaim. “With what?” you might be asked in return. Busywork is no doubt the bane of productivity at the workplace. Then again, what IS “busywork” anyway? Dictionary.com says “…work assigned for the sake of looking or keeping busy…” and Merriam-Webster says “…work that usually appears productive or of
Hacks? Is it just me, or are you seeing more and more people posting about “life hacks” and “tricks” to magically get around problems and situations of every imaginable sort? What are your favourites? One of mine is about how to open a can of food if you don’t happen to have a can opener.
All of us have ideals in mind and heart. The world we live in, though, is far from perfect. Organizations are not perfect. People are not perfect. I am not perfect. Neither are you. We continue to see some people expressing their desire to do good and be good, and perhaps posting a thing or
What Nokia’s boss is reported to have said during the press conference announcing Nokia’s takeover by Microsoft is making its way around. Reading it, and the comments following, confirms again that phrases like “Nothing succeeds like success” need to be applied judiciously. We need to know the context, the background story and, in this case,
Many years ago, we used to sing a silly campfire song which went something like: Says a thousand-legged worm As he gives a little squirm Have you seen a little leg of mine? If it can’t be found I shall have to hop around On my nine hundred and ninety-nine! Hop around, hop around Have
What comes to your mind when “viral” is thrown across your path? Do you see wildly popular content shared by millions of people across the web? Do you wish that you could create similar content? Are you anticipating millions coming your way, so that you can retire to a life of ease? Or do you