Favourite blogs for Zishang's blog

Some thoughts with Shonn

Just got some thoughts flew over my mind while discussing with Shonn, and wanna take them down...

我們要教的是“思考”這件事，而不是“某個事實” What we should teach is "critical thinking", not "Some Facts".

事實可能會因為不同的時代或情況而改變. 但思考的能力和價值卻是永恒的 Facts might change over time or situation, but the power and value of thinking is eternal.

如果考試只是單純在考學生對於「事實的記憶能力」，那我反對考試，但如果今天考試能考出學生的思考深度，創意，那我不反對，因為後者相對來說，較為公平。If exams are simply trying to test the student's ability to memorise facts, then i object exams; but if exams can test the depth of thinking or creativity of the student, then i don't object - because the second one is relatively more fair.

考試其實應該是要考學生到底學習到了多少,但不以這個決定學生的成敗,而是利用考試的結果去改進該如何加強學生的學習和教學品質. Actually Exams should be testing how much have the students learned without using the outcome to decide the success or failure of the students; yet it is supposed to use the outcomes of exams to improve teaching quality/style/method and enhance the learning of the students.

今天看電視又再次聽到有人稱美國是「邪惡帝國」，雖然在某些層面上我也不反對，但奇怪的是，為什麼這個國家卻有一流的教育。Today i hear again on tv that people say usa is 'evil empire'. even though i do not disagree on some certain levels, weirdly, why does this country have the best education?

they're evil coz they selfishly wanna make their country the best and the most comfortable/rich one. but education is important for everybody/country because only with good education, the person/country/society can grow prospectively. They are wise to value what's good for the country and for the people. Education is always the key to success. Otherwise, why are we all studying and learning? Because we know wisdom, knowledge is power and also the only fortune we could ever have!

: 26 Sep 2010 21:22 |  Tags: Random |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Power of Education

"I have a dream..... to establish a school

                            to fire up people's creativity and passion.

                            to help people understand the importance and power of knowledge

                            to set people free and do what they are really interested in and good at

                            to let people gain the power and confidence in deciding their lives

                            to make them understand they're all unique with a purpose of their existence in the world

I have a dream...... to make the world a better place..... "

This is why I love Martin Luther King and nominated him as a great leader of all times. He has a big heart. His speech touched me and everybody at that time. I could feel that his vision has emotionally bound and touched the audience and the vision has rooted in people's heart as if it's their own. Even though he was assasinated afterwards, his words and the dream stayed...

He positively influenced the people with his speech and declaration which also drew a great deal of positivity in people's minds. He took people out of the old perception frames and started to show them the new possibilities of how the world could be.                 He changed the world...with his belief and knowledge, and turned that power into a stronger power which aroused everybody's awareness and motivation to fulfill the vision he set.

Like the clip of Ben Zander, conductor of Boston Philharmonic Orchestra shows, being a leader is not about the position you hold, but the new way of BEING. Look for shinig eyes, enroll all voice in vision, radiate possibility, understand the people and care for them, try to lit up other people's possibilities/potential to perform, and shift each individual to a new way of being!

I love his theories about " don't take yourself so damn seriously" and the "give everybody an A".

It helps you realise that everybody is equal and what we do should base on a good cause to inspire and help people to perform and be the best they can be. "People are the power and the cause to make something great happen. When people gather together, they represent a great talent which is full of possibilities and potential. Peopel are the asset and the source of knowledge in the universe. Once you bring out the amazing side of the people, the world could be shaped into a dream world."

.............................. I'm all pumped up now!

: 30 Apr 2010 15:45 |  Tags: Kbam |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Organisation, People and Performance

During the OPP module, once again I realised that 'emotional intelligence' is something that affects behaviours and could influence performance and business results, especially during the knowledge sharing phase.

I'm sure everybody has watched CSI. Today a short clip about CSI, Las Vegas was started when a flight passenger constantly kicking the backseat of the person sitting in front of him. He looks paniced, anxious, problematic, etc. He had some weird behavious and the rest passengers were annoyed or feeling threatened by him when he lost control trying to open the cabin gate, and so grouped together beating him until he past away. (I know it's a relatively short brief, but the main thing was that he was acting 'abnormal', and then he triggered his own death.)

At the end of the clip, the investigators had a discussion and debate about whether the other passengers in the cabin who took the dead passenger's life away should pay the price for the death, and also whether they're forgiven by naturally defending for their own lives when they felt their lives were threatened. Some argued about no matter how the situation was intense, the group of people didn't have the right to take a life away. Yet some argued that it's all about human nature and reasonable defense. After the discussion, finally, the head of the investigators said we all shouldn't make assumptions about somebody else's behaviour. Maybe sometimes people seem to act weird, it doesn't mean that they're crazy and should be sent to the clinic for medication. Sometimes maybe show some care to understand what is the problem, then everything might be solved without any conflict.

After I saw that I had few ideas: nowadays people are lack of understanding and caring, people pre-judge others, bias with their own objectives or experiences, selfish and thus ignore the truth or opportunity to accept a better opinion, etc. So stop making assumptions and stop being biased towards people. Many times you think you know something, but you DON'T. It's so easy to be mislead by the things we thought we knew. Be objective.

I think I'm lucky that I learned or experienced such behaviour when I was relatively young. I've seen many rediculous things or behaviours as well as people spreading humours because they thought they knew, but they didn't, and at the end destroyed somebody else's life or reputation afterwards. So that's how during all these 10 years or so time, I've learned or at least tried to remind myself to speak only when I can make sense. And I'll never damage someone's reputation when I'm not involved in a matter. More likely whenever it's none of my business, I don't say nothing.

Yet, this is very difficult and I need to constantly practice and learn how to not to make assumptions and respect people, and put myself in others' shoes to think of something.

The organisation depends on the people. People have all sort of behaviors. People and bahaviors together creates the company performance. Therefore, when people are sharing and learning knowledge from each other, including behaving normally, the business performance could be gradually improved.

: 29 Apr 2010 00:12 |  Tags: Kbam |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

My motto for 10 years

Since I was 15, I realised something which I deeply truly believe and have faith in -- Everything that humans imagine, is a possibility in reality. That again today from KBAM module, it inspired me all over again. :-)

Companies set up the 'value' of the company, and start attracting people who appreciate the values. Companies should decide and strategically plan what kind of behaviour they want in the organisational environment. Whether it is bonus driving, recognition approving, or knowledge sharing, companies will either attract or develop the kind of people they want.

And knowledge affects how an organisation perform in terms of a system. Knowledge can change and motivate people, create ideas, innovate products, increase productivity and build up a sense of belonging for the employees, etc. Once the people in an organisation start sharing knowledge, the benefit is unpredictably an aftermath of initiating great possibilities. When people are less selfish, the world would always become a better place.

This motto also opens my heart in a great manner. I see things in many different ways and I value all the opinions and all the things/people I meet in my life. (I'm trying and still learning) Coz I know their existence must have a cause. We should always be open-minded and generous. There's no point to keep what you know a secret. Sharing is caring, and also a way and opportunity to gain something greater than you expect. When you share something, you open your heart, and you'll never know what the other person would repay you back. Sometimes you might be surprised or overwhelmed by what other people can actually deliver to you. That's also why I always love to respect everybody because I know that 'never underestimate anybody/anything', especially you wouldn't know what could happen the next second that the person or that thing would totally blow your world away!

CONCLUSION: I LOVE SHARING! and I BELIEVE IN that brings GOOD RETURNS in our lives.

: 25 Apr 2010 20:03 |  Tags: Kbam |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

good knowledge or bad knowledge?

In the movie, Kung-Fu Panda, Master U-guey said, "there's no good news or bad news, there's only news".

It's like knowledge and information: there's no good knowledge or bad knowledge, only information itself. If you could make the information useful, then it becomes a knowledge; vice versa that if you mis-use it, then the information is useless.

In business world, you're always trying to make the right decision based on the information and knowledge you have. It's all about strategy. Business is like a way of life. You can't learn everything or absorb all the things you learn, you always need to think (critically) and explore (experience), then find out a "good" practice instead of the "best" practice. To me, work experience is the best teacher to understand how business operates. The more you taste, the more you get. Afterall, everything in the world is about people and connections, and how do you make use of the resources you have.

Whatever people share (information) is a kind of knowledge (information). It may be useful, yet could sometimes have negative impact on it. So how to control your knowledge (information) is another kind of art.

Usually in real life, at least what I experienced and executed is that "if I don't have a certain degree of understanding about a topic/situation/matter, I don't give my comments coz it might be imcompetent that the people who receive the message may be misguided or have misconception about the certain issue which affects their decision making.

I think knowledge sharing is beautiful and generous. But how you share it and when you share it is an art and the indicator to determine whether the knowledge is useful or not. Sometimes irrelevant response during a discussion may trigger unpredictable good ideas. Yet it may also interfer the process of making a right decision.

Somehow I think it depends on luck when doing business. When the world is time to be yours, then you'll make all the right decisions along with your hardwork to make things happen. It is also about your mental model of how you perceive things as well. There's always more than 1 aspect of the ways to explain or analyse things. When you are more experienced, you know better how to choose useful and effective information, and use those knowledge in the right time to create a good effect.

: 25 Apr 2010 19:15 |  Tags: Kbam |  Comments (11) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Leadership impact on KM

Below graph is what we summarised about our discussion today. It's quite intriguing that everything we have learned during the course is still closely connected with each other. All the knowledge is consistant and integratable, and this is the way knowledge should be -- absorbed and transformed into real case application. Just like Paul reminded us today that we should review ourselves if we're practicing what we've been talking about in the real life. Are we the real practitioner, or we're just another group of people whose words speak louder than actions?

In our group, we categorised Leadership into 3 different impacts/results under 3 different leadership styles: Deming, Jack Welch, and Hitler. On the one hand, Deming's obviously is the soft democratic way that inspires individual to share knowledge. It helps the organisation to improve its performance by leading effectively, such as coaching individuals or creating systematic thinking, breaking down the communication barriers within the company and also helping the company to transform into a learning organisation. On the other hand, Hitler's constraints people's thinking and free will. Therefore, it limits the company or individual to perform or improve. Yet, Jack's talks about something more realistic -- profit, promotion, and bonus, which is very debatable.

* who do you decide who to promote if people share ideas but not necessary be the ones who're practicing them?

* as a leader, how to you set the rules or measure of knowledge sharing?

* how do you avoid, as a leader, that people start to compete with each other over personal benefit?

Overall, I personally think promotion and bonuses might be useful sometimes, but I don't agree with them most of the time. It's because it manipulates people and brings out the evil and selfish side of a human being. The impact could become negative. Just like what I experienced before when I was working that being a sales, our base salary was low but bonus system is very active. People would kill each other, back-stabbing, setting-up, lie, sleep with clients to get what they want. Once they succeed, they become greedy, and started wanting everything and getting more serious after time, and finally was manipulated by money itself. After all, hoping people to share knowledge even under conflicting of interests is a very naive idea to me.

Personally I love sharing, and I want to work in an environment that people are all working like a big happy family. But it is difficult to recognise who to promote when people share great ideas. For example, Lisa shares an idea last week about a product design, it was good, but not good enough. Because of her idea, I brainstorm and come up with another design, which turns out to be better and accepted by the company to start producing it. If there wasn't Lisa, my idea might not come out for a while or never will. Thanks to her, that my idea was approved and recognised. In this case, should the leader promote me or promote Lisa? Lisa might be upset coz my idea was just an advanced version of hers. Also she might spend a lot more time constructing the original thought than I do. Am I just letting her hard work die in vain?

Therefore, as a leader, it is crucial how to manage the knowledge. Leaders have great impacts on knowledge management as well as employee behaviors. Leadership on the other hand could also have possitive or negative impact on people. Effectively leadership could ultimately enhance the capability on creating innovative ideas that can help improve business performance as well.

: 20 Apr 2010 01:20 |  Tags: Kbam |  Comments (9) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

benefits of KBAM

when it says knowledge based asset management, then you know the foundation of the management is to have knowledge, to share, to create, and to organise it. There's almost no doubt that knowledge management or asset management is useful for a company to innovate and improve their operations and performances.

Today at the seminar we discussed a lot about the benefits of Knowledge management. Below is a summary of our discussion earlier. But the most interesting part that I realised during our brainstorming and discussion was that " Knowledge is Power ", and " Sharing is Caring ". :-)

When people have knowledge, they possess the power to be able to change the world, for better or for worse. If we use the knowledge possitively, such as education, it can bring the world closer and more innovative, even creating a world that we've never dreamt of. That having the knowledge would make our lives full of possibilities and also that everything would be possible. The energy of the knowledge that brings to the world is enormous and the impact is unpredictable.

However, to think back in the real life when I used to work, though sharing knowledge is such a possitive thing to do for a company to improve not only the products innovation, services, customer/supplier relationships, employee engagement, productivity, costs, product lead-time etc, it is an unselfish thing and probably nobel thing to do. (personal perspective) Afterall, in the real/competitive world, if sharing knowledge doesn't bring you any benefit, or even cause you negative influence that contradict to your benefit, then most likely the knowledge will not be shared that easily. So how to manage the Knowledge and to encourage of sharing it is truly an art. It involves people, that you have to engage people and make them believe that the environment is safe for sharing and sharing will bring common/mutual benefits to all.

I used to be in Sales, and whoever works in Sales before may feel the same about what I'm talking about. Imagine you're sellign the products for the company, but you need attract your own customers. Also your salary and bonus depends on the sales you have made. One day, there's a contact that you sales have to win over, how are you or are you willing to share the information you have towards this case/customer? Especially if the other sales don't know much about the product or how the business process work, will you share your knowledge about the operation or business with him/her, or you rather keep it yourself so that you can make sure you will win the case and make the deal? In this case, knowledge sharing is limited.

Therefore, in order to achieve successful knowledge sharing, creating the safe environment is very important for a company as well as considering the influence that each individual can cause.

On the other hand, possitive thinking is mandatory for business as well as for life. If people are competing with each other in a negative way, this is not helping the company nor the world to improve itself. The whole idea of knowledge sharing should teach us that we're all living in the same world. We're doing business, we're competitors, but we should all focus on making possitive influence to the business and the world. If you have a competitor, why not share your knowledge with them and make them your aligns? Applying the same logic, when you feel like you have a reason to keep silent about the knowledge that you know against your colleagues in the companies, why not sharing with them generously and come up with a better idea and make the best use out of the ideas you have. One person may not be influencial, but when 2 or more people gather together, their knowledge and what they share could be something that can change a world. That's why it helps improving the decision making and team coordination as well as improving the business performance and relationships with every part of the people that involves in an organisation.

: 20 Apr 2010 00:29 |  Tags: Kbam |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Leadership Development

I read a book about Leadership, where the author proposed that there should be a leadership development program for those who want to be an effective leader.

In the book which states, "A useful starting point in leadership development is to understand what stops people – managers – from becoming effective leaders." 

This gave me a lot to think about. It didn't use the expression of that "understand what MOTIVATES people......leaders."; instead using "what STOPS people". Sometimes in life we hardly recognise that how lucky or how wellbeing we are. We have comfortable life and we don't see the obstacles or difficulties in front of us. Or sometimes we think that won't hurt so we easily ignore the problems so that we can escape from what we don't want to know or learn. In the Art of the War, Suen-Zi said "We must understand our enemies." To me, being a leaders not only need to know who our enemies are, what we are fighting for, but most crucially - "What/Who we are to be able to Lead."

We won't lead well if we don't understand ourselves or what we want. We won't lead effectively if we don't believe in ourselves. Challenges are everywhere, everyday. We must continue leading ourselves forward so that we can show others the right way to follow.

Therefore, I learned that as a Leader, must be always self-motivated. (psychologically, emotionally, behaviourally). Because Leaders a lot of times may feel lonely coz the people around them are followers. Sometimes the environment or the people around may not be inspiring or encouraging to the leaders, but leaders need to find a way out. Always understand the importance of self-learning, and a sense of determination. When the people around you feel depressed, as a leader you can't! When the people around you want to quit, as a leader you must fight until your last breathe is taken away! As a leader, we must be professionally and emotionally intelligent and STRONG. Then we will be able to walk towards the door of success.

: 09 Mar 2010 18:22 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Reality vs. Dream

Recently inspired by some incidents and people in life...

Always face yourself and the fear inside. Honesty to oneself would truly open the light of life.

LEAD yourself to the future where you want to be, one must clearly understand oneself, and all the purposes one's being working hard for. Sometimes in our lives we thought we're walking on the right path or doing the right thing; yet some of the times we're just fooling ourselves and being MANAGED by the world around us. That way, we won't be able to live out our true selves.

"People want to be led, not managed." (Bennis) -- Universal Rule.

and in life, People want to lead and manage themselves...... without interferrence. -- Also Universal Rule.

But what leads us? -- Our ability, knowledge, experience, relationships we build - lead us to the opportunities we thirst for. When the opportunities come, we need to be ready. Ready to battle!

Battle for our fame, fortune, loved ones, or simply - our dream.

Day after day I'm not leading myself well enough, how can I lead others?

"If you must change, change yourself; if you must lead, lead yourself; if you must manage, manage yourself." (Lavinia)

: 06 Mar 2010 19:21 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

People, to push or not to push?

This morning while I was showering, suddenly I had this thought - everybody needs to be pushed: just in a different way or by different means.

Everybody needs to be motivated; some can motivate themselves more actively, but some act more passively.

If you look at some people who always seem highly motivated, they don't need any third party to push them to do things. But they are still pushed - by their ambition, family pressure, or money (greed). Those are their driving force, and they know themselves, which is why they don't need other people to tell them what to do. But they're also "pushed"?

On the other hand, if you look at some people who always act lazy, extremely passive at work, they need a third party to push them toward achieving the goal. They are obviously 'pushed'.

And in class sometimes we discuss about some people need to be pushed, but not everybody does. Therefore, I think, a leader can choose to push/motivate people in different ways, and the indicator to find out who needs to be pushed is by "understanding their family background, education background, and daily behaviours." I think the best way to manage is to understand your employees as much as you can. Work closely with them, understand them in-depth, then you would be able to know their life-death points, and be able to control/utilise them.

So from this inspiration, I think a company should have a lot of company gatherings/parties/events to interact with employees. This is a win-win policy to me personaly. :-) Also, HR would need to be a good bridge between company and employees as well for communication.

Who wants to join my company?!! Gonna have a lot of paaaaaarrrrrtiiiiiiiiiies! ;-)

: 05 Feb 2010 21:03 |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What kind of leader I want to be

While reading other coursemates' blogs when they share which kind of leaders they wish to become, I have been thinking about this for myself as well.

I think, A kind who talks not much, but every word I say is a decision or a direction; an inspiration or a motivation.

: 05 Feb 2010 20:49 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Leadership Challenge – a Life Learning Inspiration

I have a lot of inspirations today in class that got me thinking about massive of things. I've been constructing my thoughts in my mind and try to write them down making clearly sense. Let's start with the learning points from the exercise itself.

·        The importance of Debriefing and English ability

I agree but still find arguable point of what Paul commented on our English ability - that we should forget about our language accuracy and let our mind flow, coz sometimes a not-so-good-language speaks a God-damn-GOOD-Idea! I AGREE 100%, however, I still find improving our English ability is essential. Because with a not-so-good-language, one may not be able to well-communicate with the audience, then the idea is not delivered in the best way it could be.

I majored in languages myself in college, and I know sometimes wording can cause confusion. I've been trying to improve my English every day, and I know there're endless things to learn in a language, such as vocabulary, slangs, usage, etc. But I also believe in language is just a tool to communicate with people. As long as you can deliver your ideas to one another, then it's good enough. Yet, sometimes I find when communicating with people who have different levels with mine, I get confused, or not able to communicate our ideas freely, or the whole communication process is slowed down because we all try to understand what the other person is trying to say.

So I think, English is still very important and we all should try to improve our languages as a life-long task.

And because of the English ability, it affects our debriefing skills during the exercise as well. If I can understand the content in due time and able to organise all the information at the same time, won't we be able to debrief better? It is the basic skill we should have, and we should enhance it for our own sakes if we want to become a leader in the future.

·        What to debrief? 

So far that I can think of (maybe there're more) from this exercise is that 

1. Organise the information - Key words/info (eliminate unnecessary info)

2. What do we need to do - find out and distribute each task

3. What kind of people we need for each task - categorise

4. When is the deadline for each task - time plan

5. Possible cooperation in each individual/team - organise the responsibilities

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Leader and the expectation

Everybody has certain expectation to the leader as leader has his/her own expectation to others. I think it is better to clarify and make valid communication in the beginning of the task. So everybody knows how to adopt according to different situations.

If I'd do the exercise again, I'll make sure each task is distributed to the best suitable person if possible. And have the people designing the route work together with the people in budget control. Firstly I would make a decision on which places we are going or we are not going as a leader's decision making. Then everybody focus on completing their tasks within due time and budget. After all, the leader is the one who has more knowledge, and in this situation, totally hand-off or free style is not suitable under this task. And the leader, as the one who is most knowledgeable, should at least confirm and evaluate the final route the team makes.

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Personal enriched learning points

The reason I named this article - Life learning inspiration - is because to me, I learnt something old again, and something slightly new :-) To me, this means so much coz my dream is to build a school that helps poor or people who has any kind of potential in what they are good at to be well educated and utilize their skills in every possible way – to make their dreams come true. I've been planning this since I was 17, and one day......one day I will make it happen.

When I was in college in Taiwan, a mentor told me - "Don’t let your passion fade away. Coz it can lead you to do great things." And I think this is something the real world kills over time and I need to remind myself that. I'm very grateful that my college in Taiwan let me learn and experience a lot of leadership skills since 15, we have presentations every day, group work in every subject, public presentations, exchange programs overseas, running student council, found a student club, etc; and once again, all skills and knowledge should be reviewed and re-learnt from time to time. (Life-long learning process)

My college is the only and a leading language institution in Taiwan, but probably the worst profit maker in education business. School is in huge debt because we charge reasonable tuition, and give all our students the best learning environment, professors, facilities, opportunities that we could possibly get. Even the government refused to let us go bankrupt. Its motto is to educate language professionals in Taiwan with "knowledge and personality". Every year, our mandatory courses will have Personality development. This is the quality I found similar from Leadership and Excellence module in WMG. I'm soooo content to realise again that "Knowledge or education which matters is the essence of that you can remember for the rest of your life and spend time on practicing it."

--------------------------------------------

Lastly, the definition of leadership to me:

True Leadership comes from within. You can't fake a style, not for long.

Meaning: Try to enrich ourselves......... in all possible ways......

: 05 Feb 2010 19:55 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Thursday Hot

The first learning point for today is actually a very difficult but realistic one -- People.

As Paul mentioned the Urban terrorist - high energy, low attitude: this kind of people will meet us at least once in a lifetime. I've met quite a few :-) They have a lot of opinions, judgements, that sometimes surpress the leaders and challenge their power in public. As a leader, this kind of people or situation has to be carefully handled! When Urban terrorist starts to influence others more than a leader does, then it reflects that the leader is incompetent and also the leader will be forced sometimes to use 'position power' to take over control of the chaos.

Again, I think the ability to solve this requires experience and personal charisma. Experience might be being able to know how to handle the situation will harm the leadership the least, or even getting every respect back. Charisma can be for instance, good at talking at people and persuading people to believe in what he/she say. (Charm the followers)

The 2nd learning point is that either during the practice or real life, we still tend to solve the problem and ignore about other factors. Or sometimes we want to solve the problem so much so that we can fool ourselves that everything will be better. But what we do everyday may be keep solving different kinds of problems but still keep having new problems. Therefore, as a leader, I think he/she need to develop the ability of seeing the future or bigger picture of the whole situation. Dr. Deming says, "Leaders should think/solve tomorrow, not today." This applies to this as well. Leaders should think about what to do tomorrow, today's tasks leave to the employees to achieve; but we all need to know what's gonna happen tomorrow.

The third learning point is that leaders or company should try their best to take the responsibility of hiring a new person and not firing any of the employees if they're not performing well. Of course here doesn't mean that we don't fire at all, we fire those who's not appreciating the system; but we try to understand those we appreciate the system, but just fail to do things right. We should help them, assist them understand the problem. Coach them, guide them, not creating fear for them. One of the ways I personally support is to avoid firing people but to re-allocate them.

Paul mentioned a strategy that's very similar to my thinking: Help people find a job when they don't fit in the company, either a new position in the firm, or elsewhere. I strongly agree that we should have this kind of service in my company. I think the company partly shares the responsibility of recruiting people but find out they don't fit in. We know their skills, we believed in their skills, that's why we hired them in the first place. And when they can't perform well or they don't feel comfortable working for us, we should think of something to help them. Another benefit for this is that the employee will respect your company and in the future the benefit may exceed your expectation. Because maybe you changed his life, for that he's appreciated; or he becomes a more successful person than you, and you might be the one who made him the him today. :-)

The fourth learning point is "START DOING SOME PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATION!"

: 28 Jan 2010 21:10 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Shoot for the moon! Even if you miss it….it's a great view! (TUE)

I'm very glad that this module we have a tutor to assist us. He said something that quite hammered my head: "You're at a masters level, so do the masters level's work." also "there are so many theories introduced for you to learn, but YOU have to be the one who take these theories into a higher level and into practice." I think...I forgot how to be a student afterall. :-)

I need to lead myself on the way where I want to be, as well motivate myself to be the one that I can be!

Life's about searching, learning, leading and doing. 'Bad Workman blames the tool'! If I didn't success, I'm the only one I should be blaming at. Not how hard the courses are, not how difficult the people are, not how boring the books are, not even how less the time we've got. Because we're our masters, we make decisions, we live with it. I'm always not a person who likes to give excuses. Maybe sometimes the causes can be external, nothing I could have controlled, but I always find a way to solve it. Eg. the bus at my stop don't stop at all becoz during morning rush hour, it's fulled before it gets to my stop. or sometimes people refuse to move to the back so the driver won't take more people on. I think it's rubbish. But I chose to take the bus, I could have waited at the bus stop 1 hour earlier, or I could take a taxi when I'm really running late, which is what I did sometimes. I mean, there's always a way or a solution. It just depends on if you wanna choose it or not. You LEAD YOURSELF to the decision, so if the decision is made by you, you don't have excuse. that's me......

So in today's presentation about Hoshin Kanri, we didn't carry out a specific plan. and next time, I'm sure we will.

On Tuesday in class, Paul said when employees (bottom) have problems (work related), as Leader, we should see the problems as OUR problems instead of just the employees'. It's just like Hoshin Kanri's catchball process' purpose. From Top to bottom and bottom to top, we need to understand the barriers or why the targets aren't or can't be achieved. We need to help people to identify and contribute again. The company can also learn from the process. Afterall, we can never force people to do the things they don't agree with, nor blame them for not being able to deliver the tasks we ask. Therefore, Dr. Deming's SoPK and PDCA are so important for continuous improvement...... really is...

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In the Hotel simulation, I volunteered to be the leader. My teammates think I lead well, and I can always improve. From my own experience in this practice, I reminded myself again that A good leader may not necessary be a profit maker. He/she may not be smart enough to make money, but a good leader can make people who can make the money work for him/her is enough :-)

An example of my previous manager, he's 60, very experienced business people, acting lazy at work, but always kissing boss' backside. BUT, he's VERY SMART, and knows how to FULLY UTILISE each individual. I admire him very much when I observed that. Everything he did or showed the boss comes from me, he gave me the credit a few times, not always, but he knows HOW TO USE ME. :-) coz I was young, energetic, and willing to take all the challenges to prove myself. (well....I'm still young!) So basically he doesn't have to do the actual work. Which is exactly what we talk about these days: MANAGERS MANAGE, WORKERS DO! I didn't envy him or dislike him at all for not doing work, because I know he's doing strategic things...which I yet to deliver.

And I think in our lifetime, we shouldn't be jealous at others when they do well or when we think they could have done more to get what they have now, simply I think sometimes we don't always know how they have contributed to the company/society. Everybody has their own skills, and my manager's happened to be "understand what my boss want, deliver it, use people to achieve it". Which is brilliant :-)

So I think we can always set a goal for ourselves, lead ourselves to it. Don't assume too much but try to understand the situation first before we make any decision, tell others what to do, or even criticise their behaviors.

: 28 Jan 2010 20:40 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Build up Charisma

Tuesday we discussed about a point of How to inspire leadership effectively. During the discussion, we reminded ourselves that A leader should provide a vision whilst others can follow the vision as well as believe in the person who's projecting the vision.

A good visioin, if it's being told or led by a person who has a bad name, nobody would believe it. (or at least it's more difficult to make people believe) However, if it's a good leader, maybe the vision or the ideas are not well established, people still would contribute their efforts and make things work (better).

When building up the leadership skills or styles, culture and people are so important. They're the variations in the company. A leader has to learn or to be flexible to apply different leadership styles or approaches according to individual or followers' needs. Leader should also be SENSITIVE enough to OBSERVE and SENSE the surroundings and what is happening, or even FORESEE what WILL HAPPEN. 

I think these skills have to be learnt and practiced over time and experience. or simply some people are just born with it. Some people are born to be a leader, some people are not. Some people learn and grow from experience... (personal view, no reference) I think if my teammates ever think I'm sensitive and able to get people involved is because of these two reasons: experience and nature

Naturally, I tend to be very understanding since I'm little. I cry when I see people cry. I feel sad when somebody is sad. I'm very easily to fall into someone elses' emotional status. I think part of that is I'm being very imaginative as well. Coz whenever somebody's reflecting something, for example, sorrow, I can imagine what he/she's being throw, and I can feel the same sorrow as she does. Maybe not as real as hers, but close enough to make me feel something.

PS. A story of myself: When I watched the movie "Finding Nemo", I cried SO MUCH. Because I can imagine if i'm the father, and I can't find my Nemo, I'm going to be SO SAD and SO DESPERATE. SO whenever Nemo's daddy shows up swimming in the sea and shouting "Nemo! Nemo!", I just burst into tears right away. :-p Part of this is because of experience as well. That the stories and love between me and my father, also made me more sensitive upon these kind of things.

So my point is, these elements are the ones I think are important for a leader to possess, on the other hand, can be learnt from experience. Yet part of the skills still come from the nature self. And we can always try our best to be who we really are, and the best we can be! :-)

: 28 Jan 2010 20:04 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

1st experience as a Leader in WMG

I'm really learning a lot in this module...seriously...

I've been leaders many times in my life, in college or at work... but none of them helped me to receive real feedbacks that can help me grow each time. Back in schook when you lead, you either make people love you and follow you, or they dislike you. At work when you lead, you either win the respect, or you lose your face; sometimes if you lead badly, you even get fired :-)

But in here, really is a great chance to just try, and give everything a shot. Maybe sometimes it's not very realistic situations, but we get to think about from so many different perspectives, and try to see if each different styles work out for us; also if it doesn't, why not? What do we really want? Who we really want? What kind of leader we really wanna follow? These are all very useful for us to examine in the future...

This morning I'm sorry that I missed the class, since my landlord had to fix something...When I arrived in the afternoon, I instantly volunteered to be a leader and try to get involved in the activities asap. The result turned out wonderfully.

There were some learning points for myself:

1. Make sure always ask everybody's ideas, coz sometimes some people might have great ones to share. Those might be the opportunities for me as well as company's assets.

2. If I become a manager one day, I should help my people to do better in their jobs, not throwing jobs at them or complain if they didn't do a good job.

3. be assertive! clear goals for people to follow

4. be nice, but not too nice. leaders still need to charm the people to listen/respect me. A too democratic one doesn't help sometimes.

5. I do talk less and listen more :-) Coz I wanna make sure I understand what everybody's thinking, what they want. Otherwise all my talking would be pointless.

6. During the meeting, I didn't manage to retain my authority throughout, which I thought I did. But obviosuly when I made my points, my teammates weren't threatened. :-) Meaning: They'll use the cap for the coffee cup, but will not move to the kitchen if they still split the coffee out. Therefore, next time, after playing nice leader, I need to be more harsh on this! :-) and make sure they all listened and agreed to the trade.

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Tomorrow's presentation, I'm the leader again. And I think we had a very good meeting. Looking forward to our presentation tomorrow! Good luck people!

: 26 Jan 2010 02:59 |  Tags: Leadership |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New film – wanna watch …

I've traveled to some countries, not a lot, only 20. Wherever I go, I see, and I learn.

Learn from the goods, learn from the bads. Yet, I learned how much I love my hometown - Taiwan.

When I introduce myself saying "I'm from Taiwan", some people would say, "Oh, I've been there. Thai food is sooo good." Then I will say, "um...actually, it's TAIWAN, not Thailand...U know, an island next to China, we're good at IT products, like HTC, ASUS,ACER...etc"  And then they will say,  "Oh, yeah, China!" and then I had to start introducing and clarifying some points about this beautiful country.

It's not a perfect country...the traffic is crowded, the air polution in big cities are crazy. But we have very clear and convenient MRT (Metro), we have HSR (High Speed Rail)- travel from North to South only takes you 90mins. Also, the streets are not as clean as Japan. But we have a lot of hard working cleaning ladies/gentlemen or even semi-volunteers to clean up the streets since primary school! (值日生/公共區域打掃)

And just like in every other country, our politicians are fighting all the time about who knows whose profit or power they want. But, Taiwanese people are always generous, forgiving, kind, open-hearted, hard-working, and friendly. We have great service in Taiwan, great food-any kind you want, great landscapes, great ocean, great beach, great 7-11, great movie theatre, great Kareoke (KTV), great parties, great musics, great entrepreneurs, great writers,..... can't finish naming them... and the world just need to know about us more.

So, today, I'm proudly introducing a new Hollywood film, talking about the politic status and real history happened between China, the US and Taiwan back in the 70's and 80's. My father told me the story about "WHITE TERROR" when I was little, and I still can't forget it. I think even though I don't know much about this, I'm feeling a lot.... Both my grand parents are from China during the Civil War in 1940's. They were the first people who followed the Nationalists to Taiwan when Chang Kai Shek lost the War. My grand father was a solider, a very brave one. He managed to live when he could have been killed 3 times. All my brothers/sisters/cousins learnt so much from the last generations. It was a complicated time, but we all grew out of it.

---- We may be a small island, but we are indeed spectacular. :-)

WATCH THE TRAILER: http://www.formosathemovie.com/trailer.h tml

OFFICIAL WEBSITE: http://www.formosathemovie.com/

(PS. This is purely patriotic, nothing political.)

: 21 Jan 2010 23:11 |  Tags: Taiwan |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Opportunity Cost

A daily concept that I wanna remind myself all the time. -- Always measure the opportunity cost of my study, my travel, and my life.. :-)

Opportunity cost is the value of the next-best choice available to someone who has picked between several mutually exclusive choices.

Examples:

A person who has $15 can either buy a CD or a shirt. If he buys the shirt the opportunity cost is the CD and if he buys the CD the opportunity cost is the shirt. If there are more choices than two, the opportunity cost is still only one item, never all of them.

An organization that invests $1 million in acquiring a new asset instead of spending that money on maintaining its existing asset portfolio incurs the increased risk of failure of its existing assets. The opportunity cost of the decision to acquire a new asset is the financial security that comes from the organization's spending the money on maintaining its existing asset portfolio.

: 15 Jan 2010 18:07 |  Tags: Random |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Books are poisons

Reading reading reading.... and then started day dreaming about words people say about reading.

My Ancient Chinese Study teacher in college is a person with a lot of characteristics. She's knowledgable, calm, however in a way, indifferent sometimes. She read so many books, knows about all the histories and ancient readings, and what she told us one day was "Books are poisons...You're poisoned right at the moment you open a book." Obviously it shocked everybody, including me. I couldn't forget what she said. And her reasoning was difficult to argue. She said, "Because once you started reading, you started absorbing the knowledge, and you would gradually or even just a bit being influenced by the contents in the book. Maybe you learnt something new, your views are different, your thinkings have changed...etc. But are you sure what's in the book are good for you, or your learning?"

It's so difficult, isn't it? To have the ability to read selectively and critically all the time. You need to have a very strong mind, yet a very open heart to learn new ideas. It's an art, and a wisdom.

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Another saying is more common to our daily lives -- Walking for a thousand miles wins over reading a thousand books. (direct translation) or "He that travels far knows much."

Then I started having ichy feet....... :-)

: 15 Jan 2010 17:22 |  Tags: Random |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Leadership appears everywhere

This is another discussion we had during team discussion about the definition of leadership.

In the Matrix, the last category is "Leadership occurs within a situation". I think it's so true when I relate it into daily life. This is debatable since another teammate disagreed. Yet, I think we're just looking at this from a different angle. Open discussions are always welcome :-)

If we think deeper, leadership appears everywhere. Whenever there is a situation, you can track leadership. A very simple example I gave yesterday: A group of friends, we don't know what to eat for lunch, we discussed for 10 mins but didn't reach any conclusion. Now, one of the friends proposed: let's go to Rootes building! and then it initiates the other friends to think about it and maybe just follow it, or not. To me, that one person was showing a leadership element. Because he's being initiative and constructive, meanwhile, he wants to lead the group to decide on something or agree on a common matter. he's leading the group to have a shared goal - a decision. And if people agreed, they will follow him to the Rootes for lunch.

Maybe I will come up with more or better examples, yet to me, I think in our daily lives, we are all trying to lead something or somebody. We might not be a great leader or lead a group to do great things that leaves track in the history, but we ARE leading our own lives.

As previous stated, some people might not agree with this, coz maybe you think it's not leading, it's just gathering, discussing and trying to reach to a common ground with people. But as I said, I think we're both correct in our own angles of viewing this.

Discussions are welcome. Leadership is just a huge topic.... exciting!

: 14 Jan 2010 15:16 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem