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 […]
A comrade of mine recalled an incident when he was training cadets. It happened to be an offensive operations exercise, and the cadets had fared very badly. During the main debrief, which was of course after all the After-Action-Reviews (AARs), “Hotwashes”, or what I personally have come to disdain as “Hogwashes” and so forth. When the […]
Brainstorming sessions, or whatever you might like to call them these days, are excellent for a couple of things. They do churn out lots of ideas, of which one or two might even be great, and they do throw light on areas of developmental need in our organizations. “Bouncing ideas off each other” is a […]
Intrapreneur is actually the same as entrepreneur except it operates within the framework of a larger organization that the Intrapreneur does not own. I think that most of us are born with an entrepreneurial mindset already embedded within us. Tragically, this is eroded by the time we get to school and start working, and is replaced […]
Yes, I’ve been referring to the organismic company for a while now. And yes, I’ve been coming across posts and articles talking about how to make “Industrial Age” companies more organic, how to have better Job Descriptions, how to have more flexible Organization Charts and how to better tap on the vast Knowledge Bank that […]
On 17 Sep 2014, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Tharman Shanmugaratnam spoke about the need to adopt “meritocracy through life” at the official opening of the Lifelong Learning Institute, which aims to raise competencies in citizens, among other things. I was flicking through the news when this caught my eye. It caused me […]
Are you someone who is constantly “Thinking out of the box?” Is your organization known for “Out of the Box” thinking and innovation? Why? Do simple re-conformations and incremental improvements represent “breakthroughs”? How often do genuine “breakthroughs” occur, anyway? While you’re pondering that, has anyone realized what the “Box” actually IS? You know what Russian […]
Standardization. The rallying cry of optimization maximizers. In today’s innovation-centric environment, this might sound a little ho-hum to you. Which way are you inclined, optimization-centric or innovation-centric? Think you can’t have both? Think again! Really, this economics of exclusion has gone deep into the bones. Manifests in all areas of our lives, doesn’t it? Anyway, […]
Sure. Like, how can you be prepared for things you don’t even know will happen yet? How can you be prepared for eventualities that you still have no clue about? Exactly. If you have read the original “Scouting for Boys” by Robert Baden-Powell, you would probably be able to answer that question. Since all of us […]
I saw a LinkedIn post the other day vilifying what it referred to as “stretch goals” in organizations. I can’t find it now, or I’d put the link here. Well, whether people choose to refer to “stretch goals”, “quantum leaps” or whatever new terminology comes along, I know one thing for sure – I always […]
That’s something along the lines of “Four legs good…two legs baaad!” Think about it! I’m not saying that we should avoid quantity-based businesses or reduce quantity for the sake of reducing quantity. What I am saying is that large volumes, quantity businesses, may have a greater tendency to have very thin profit margins. Therefore, even […]
The Theory of Constraints is something that caught my eye recently. I was indulging myself in a STRATFOR video in which George Friedman was postulating that due to the unchangeables of geography, historical baggage, human behaviour and time in history, peoples and nations may aspire to things lofty and noble, and not arrive at where […]
The Simple Truths clip on “212. The extra degree” came to my mind, but in a different way. I had actually written to them some time ago to say that I didn’t quite agree with the whole concept, since the clip neglected to take the latent heat of vapourization into consideration, but I was okay […]
Download the pdf. This is not a word-for-word transcript, but is essentially the same content. Anyone who is in business is automatically in Sales, Marketing and Customer Relations. If you’re not into all these three, you aren’t really in business. Sales and Marketing are closely related. You could call Marketing the Strategy and Sales the […]
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. […]
Lack of appetite due to a fear of getting fat. That’s the commonly known anorexia nervosa. So, what’s anorexia sophia? Well, sophia means wisdom. Anorexia sophia is a lack of appetite for wisdom. There might be a hunger and a craving for other things, but the appetite for wisdom seems to be a rare condition. […]
Innovation. Buzzword for our times. People who innovate are seen as rainmakers. An “Innovator” is hailed as an inspiring leader, while an “optimizer” is popularly seen as someone who just does the mundane work of running the system. Innovators are seen as creative, bold, risk-takers, visionaries, strategically-minded, and a list of other accolades. Optimizers are relegated to the […]
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 […]
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 […]
The poster in this post has been going around for quite a while. What do you think of it? If you have shared this poster in your blog posts or social media accounts, does it represent what you believe in? At first sight, it seems good. Do what others won’t do. Step out of your […]
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 […]
How essential is IT to your business? Pretty much, I take? Well, whether you run a small business or a large enterprise, IT is definitely part of your outfit in one way or another. I would just invite you to consider – is it a servant or has IT become your master? Do you make […]
I commented on a comfortable article on Forbes and noticed that the whole comment doesn’t appear in LinkedIn and Facebook. So I thought I’d post it here. I’d encourage you to read the article, too, I think it’s a good one by Margie Warrell. Hi, Margie, great article! Agreed with what you say, and can I […]
Most of us know that we can bring a horse to water, but we can’t force the horse to drink. Ah…but we can salt the oats! What does that mean? Well, for those of us who aren’t used to horsing around, oats are what horses get fed. Besides the green, green grass you see in […]
A lot of people live much of life on the World Wide Web. Does that make them spiders? What would you call a 3D web? Imagine, if you will, a web in three dimensions. From your position at the centre of your web, you have strands of non-sticky silk, perhaps the toughest biological material on […]
Are you an innovative person? Is your organization innovative? What, in any case, IS innovation? Well, I think most of us would agree that innovation is introducing change, organic or otherwise, that would help make things better, faster, smoother, more efficient, more effective, more user-friendly, more cost-effective, or a combination of the above. We hear […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.