How can a job be destroyed? It is like saying that a road is being diverted. You don’t divert roads, you divert traffic. You realign roads. Rivers can be diverted, aircraft can be diverted, but not roads. Jobs cannot be destroyed. They get obsolescent or obsolete. (Yes, there is a slight difference, go look it […]
Sometimes I hear the phrase “You can bring a horse to the water, but you can’t force a horse to drink.” I invariably reply “Yes, but you can give salt to the horse to make it thirsty.” Developing healthy appetites is something like that. Hunger is something natural, but appetite is learned. We all get […]
CIPD podcast 67 discusses “Innovation and HR.” We discuss innovation as if it were something unusual, something that came into existence only recently, and yet innovation has always been part of us and, indeed, is all around us. Yet we tend to view it the same way we view natural processes like childbirth and breastfeeding. […]
It is a common saying nowadays that if someone is under-performing in a job, it is due more to a job mismatch than to the presence of issues the person in the job may have. The theory is that, if a person is a good fit with the job, with the organization, with the people, […]
Do you have a good EQ? I think Daniel Goleman didn’t intend to mislead anyone about EQ, but I do think that many people have swung one way or the other. Seems to be the case, as always. When will level-headed thinking prevail? Quite difficult, I suppose, since emotions versus our minds are something like […]
This is not only for all who are serving in large organizations, particularly government ones. Hands up if you have used that phrase, or a similar one! Right, that should include just about everyone! Hands up if you have ever been a Chief this or a Chief that! Ok, not too may hands going up. […]
The first time I flew to Australia, the film “The Man from Snowy River” was being screened. No personal screens, then, you watched the movie on the screen suspended from the fuselage. I remember one of the characters, played by Kirk Douglas, if I’m not mistaken, saying “It’s a hard country. Makes for hard men.” […]
Many years ago, there was a television series called the “Twilight Zone”, which featured mysterious, paranormal-type events. Pretty scary stuff, in those days. At least, watching the episodes made your hair stand on end. Recently, we of course have had the “Twilight” series, which, as I understand, features werewolves and other similar things. I don’t […]
Daniel Pink, author of “Drive” and other books, says that people have three basic wants. They are Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. You might remember that a little better if you think that people like to be “AMPed”. I wonder what he might have said about gamification. As far as I can tell, gamification also fulfills […]
Technology is looked upon as a multiplier, and of course it is. We expect it to expand our businesses, get us more customers, help us deliver better products, services and outcomes for our stakeholders and help us manage our businesses better. Just get some technology and…voila! Problems erased. Our quality goes up, capacity is increased […]
What are the more popular bandwagons in town these days? Know any? Are you riding on one, maybe two of them? I came across another article on open-plan offices, which sparked this post. Bandwagons. Jump in when they best serve your interests. Jump off when you’re done. Because if you stay on, you might find […]
Sounds familiar? Have you had days that felt like Humpty-Dumpty? How did you respond? Did you jump to your feet, blowing the trumpet for all the King’s horses and all the King’s men to come and salvage the situation? Or did you call for the Royal Physician to assess whether or not Humpty-Dumpty could indeed […]
The title is a play on Jules Verne’s Anomalous Phenomena published around the 1880s and describing a fanciful journey on a comet through space. What’s going through my mind? Analogies, of course! Seth Godin must either be reading my mind or vice versa. Pity he doesn’t cater for interaction on his blog. I suppose it […]
It was Mark Twain who said “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society”. Was it only dress he was talking about? Does what we wear define us, or do we wear whatever expresses our quintessential selves? If our workplace has a dress code, does that inhibit our creativity? If […]
We all seem to forget that terms like “fluid”, “rapid”, “high rate of”, are all relative terms. Since they are relative terms, what is rapid to one may not be rapid to another. What seems highly fluid to one might be all in a day’s work for another. If you get to spend a week […]
From Wikipedia, [Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly.] I don’t know about you, but I have often discerned hints of “Hey, no fair!” when I come across articles in journals or in the news talking about “Asymmetric Warfare”. Instead of whining about our competitors not behaving as […]
Fear is actually a good thing. It keeps us alive. A healthy fear of consequences helps us to stay safe even as we explore and find ways to become more creative. There are two basic motivating drives in all human beings: Fear of Loss, and Desire for Gain. These two complement each other. It is […]
Something I read on Inc. this morning caught my attention. Margaret Heffernan was writing about her observations that the pipeline for female leaders is full to bursting point. She said that, during her interviews with women leaders, she asked the question “So what have you done to help other women?” Those who answered with confidence, […]
When discussing topics like “multi-tasking”, one of the things I raise is that we ought, not to “multi-task”, but to achieve proficiency in as many relevant competencies as possible, to the extent that those competencies, which may involve processes, become, as it were, “automatic”. I like to illustrate this by using the autonomic and sympathetic […]
We are often exhorted to “Find what you love and do it”. Less often do we hear “Love what you do when you’re in it”, meaning learning to love your job, whatever it is! Some of you might know the story of the bird that failed to fly to warmer climes for the winter. Shivering […]
“The good is the enemy of the best”. What is your definition of the “best”? It is the same question as “What is your definition of success?” As usual, people seem to be divided into two or more camps about this. One camp says that we should always go for what is best all the […]
Marshall Goldsmith’s popular book essentially discusses how certain small habits can actually hold us back from further progress in our lives. Many people might think that a certain characteristic they have, like always winning, for example, is something that fostered their success so far. However, the characteristic of always winning, whatever it takes, may actually […]
Does “BigDzilla” sound familiar? Those of you familiar with Ultraman would also know Godzilla the huge monster. BigDzilla is also a huge monster otherwise known as Big Data. There seems to be much excitement about Big Data these days. Big Data is seen by some as the next money-spinner. It can both be sold and […]
According to some sources, A & W, as in the fast food chain Allen & Wright, came to Singapore in 1968. The chain sold hot dogs and root beer floats to loyal afficionados until about 2003, when the last restaurant closed down. Another A & W pair came to Singapore long before that. Their names […]
Many of us would prefer FOC to mean “Free of Charge” rather than “Fear of Change.” We actually need to get rid of this sort of thinking. There is no such thing as “Free of Charge”. Someone made it possible. Someone paid for it. It is more proper to use the term pro bono. We […]
I think it would be safe for me to say that movies have become a big part of our lives. They have, I think, gone way beyond being simply a form of entertainment to being a very powerful force that is able to shape our thinking, our minds, our attitudes and the very essence of […]
I read with interest about the Buffalo Fighting Festival in Do Son, Vietnam, in the 23 Sep 2011 edition of the Business Times’ Special Focus Section. Having done a little research on smallholder dairy farming in the tropics a while back, it was heartening to note that interest in buffalo farming remains high in this […]
How concerned are you with making right choices? What do you base your decisions on? How do you decide which career to embark on, what hobby to pursue, what financial instruments to invest in, where to go for your next vacation, and so on? In this post, I am not talking about making ethical choices. […]
You must be logged in to post a comment.