Engagement is getting lower on Linkedin

 1. I began writing actively on Linkedin since 2018. I still remember I was i the airport, on our way to Manila, a friend by the name of Bavani told me that I should be more active on Linkedin. I had been actively writing on Facebook back then, and she told me that what I wrote on Facebook was perfect for LinkedIn (I remembered that impostor syndrome was what made me not write on LinkedIn - fear of people judging me).

2. But when I started to post, I noticed that people started to engage with my posts. Some strangers commented and later we became friends. That motivates me to write more on that platform.

3. I began to look into the behaviour of that platform (read: algorithm), what makes certain posts went viral and what not. I noticed it behaves slightly differently from Facebook. So I wrote for the audience on Linkedin, and their mindset on the platform.

4. In 2019 and 2020, I was listed as The 100 Icons on Linkedin that you should follow, by Marketing in Asia. Those days, this kind of ranking had a huge impact and everybody listed was very proud of it. They put the title on their profile (including mine). But after 2020, I noticed there were no such rankings anymore.

5. But recently, I began to write less on Linkedin. Not only on Linkedin, but in so many other platform. I have so many things to say, but I just didn't wrote them. And I reflected why? Did I lose my motivation? Or did things change around me?

6. After some thoughts that I jotted down on paper, I think there are several factors:

7. First of all, social media is so addictive, that I think I spend more time scrolling than creating. The moment I want to just check the notifications (I get a lot, but not like before - notifications are more about what I like and what's happening, rather than the engagement I receive from my content). But when I opened up the notification, I spent perhaps half an hour or several hours sticking to the other contents that pushed to me, based on my interest (such as guitar, personal development, business, some politics and geo-politics etc.) When I stop scrolling, I couldn't even remember what I should post.

Leadership is all about dealing with people

 I have been involve in so many platform, and one thing that I learn is; everywhere we go it is all about dealing with human. And the best way to learn about leadership is by being involve in different platform.

Most platform that I involved in is not a paid platform. Platform like Toastmasters, BNI, or association like MAPS are platform where it is run by volunteers. And running by volunteers means that they are not being paid, and they are doing it voluntarily. Who would do things not being paid? They are not doing it just voluntarily, bu passionately.

One thing that I observed is, even though people are not being paid, people have different motive of joining, serving and contributing. And I realized that most people wants to contribute, of course based on their personal motive (which most of the time is not monetarily). And because the motives are different, politics will always be part of the game. Understanding how the game is played, to me is all about leadership. Because if you can survive in that kind of environment, means that you can learn much about leadership.

Several thing that I learn:

1. Most problems happens because people have different way of viewing the world, which means people have different motive of achieving what they intend to achieve.

2. The best way to solve any conflict that happens is through conversation.

3. Best conversation only can happen if you are willing to listen. Listening without judgement, because you want to learn their point-of-view.

4. Once you understand their point-of-view, you understand their motive of doing things.

5. The best leader is where someone can align these different point-of-view and make people move towards one unified direction.

6. You cannot avoid conflict, becuase it is part of human nature. It has been there since the first creation of human being. But you can be good at managing the conflict.

7. The best way to understand people is by understanding why they do what they do. Understand the motive behind it.

8. If you can leverage the motive behind them, you can get people who are motivated. And align them with your goal, then your team will be unstoppable.

#johanirwan 8 June 2026

On Goal Setting

About 10 years ago, I was hired by a corporate organization to run a program for their management trainee. Basically, these are the fresh graduates who just landed to their first job for a technical company. Part of the content of my program is about goal-setting. After explain about some basic concept of goal-setting, I asked the participants to write down the goal for their career. To my surprise, most of them wrote down that one day they wanted to become a Superintendent. I was wondering, why that is their aim for their career - not becoming a CEO, or any C-suites, or at least some other different position like General Manager. 

Curious, I asked the participants why most of them wanting to become the Superintendent. The answer that they gave, the previous session the day before my session was delivered by their internal staff with the position of Superintendent. Everybody was looked up at him and unconciously decided that they wanted to be like him.

I started to notice that it is not unique to that session in that organization. But that is what natural human being response. Our goal is only as big as the reality that we could see. 

I once listened to the podcast The Game of Impossible, where Idris Jala said that when he was a child, he lived in a rural area in Bario, which he regarded as the most remote place in Malaysia. He recalled that when he was a child, he didn't see the world beyond the mountain. But between 1962-1966, there was confrontation; the British soldiers went to their hometowns. These soldiers behave wierdly, they were smoking cigarette, eat different foods, and watched movies. One day, one of the soldiers told him that there are world beyond the mountain, and if you want to get there you need to pass your exams. That was his motivation back then, so he set the goal to study hard to see the world beyond the mountain. Imagine if there were no confrontation and no British soldiers were there, Idris might not become a minister and lead the transformation of the country.

To expand your goal, you need to expand your reality

I am convince that we can see someone's future just by asking them what is their goal. 

Here is the thing that most people missed. When we set goal, but with small reality that we might have, we will set small goals. And the main reason is their reality is never been expanded. That explains why sometimes when you were born within a rich community, your goal might be different as compared to someone who lives in PPRT (PPRT is the Malaysian government housing and poverty eradication initiative under the Ministry of Rural and Regional Development (KKDW) designed to help the rural poor and hardcore poor). In fact, there is a term called Economic Connectedness which a concept emerged from the work of economist Raj Chetty which measures how much do people from low-income background have genuine friendships with people from higher-income background.

The core idea is simple. If poor and wealthy people live in a completely separate social worlds, opportunities does not flow. But if they become friends, information, aspiration, norms, mentorship, referrals, and opportunities can flow across economic classes. The researches found that the "cross-relationship" is one of the strongest predictors of upward social mobility ever identified. It is all about exposure.

And the truth is, we cannot get the government or people from authorities to set the environment, but we definitely can choose who we want to be friend of. Some said that we are the reflection of five of our closest friends. That is literally true, because our friends are the one that helps us to expand our reality.

To expand our goal, we just need to expand our reality.

How to set a better goal

First step before setting a goal is for us to understand there are different types of goals. This is something that I learn from Bob Proctor, there are three types of goals:

1. Type A Goal - You know how to do it
2. Type B Goal - You think you can do it
3. Type C Goal - What do you really want to do. (And you don't have any idea how to achieve it).

Type A is the common goal that most people set. They know how to go to Kuala Lumpur. They just set a goal, one day I want to go to Kuala Lumpur. Probably they have been there before. In terms of financial goal, we can set to earn a certain amount - amount that is familiar to us. We have reach the same sales target last year and we just repeat the same sales target this year. We know how to do it.

Type B goal is a bit ambitious. We have never been there, but we know we can figure things out. We haven't been to Maldives. But we know we can Google the information, asked some of our friends who have been there. Or perhaps we have our friends from Maldives that is going to entertain us when we reach there. The thing about Type B goal, it is all about setting the date or deadline. Most people don't set the deadline it becomes a wishlist. In terms of financial, we might not have RM1 million before. We set a target, we want to accumulate RM1 million by end of 2030. It is achievable goal if we put our plan on it.

Type B goals is the one that normally what SMART goal is all about. We set something that we can achieve, realistic and time-bounded.

But Type C goal is a goal that we really want, and most of the time we have no idea how to reach there. Most people are either afraid to set this goal, or they have no idea that they can set this goal. Example of travelling is to go to the Mars. This is what Elon Musk level of goals. He might has no idea how to reach to Mars. But he perhaps will figure it out along the way. In business, to reach RM1 billion sales by 2030. You have no idea and looking at current situation it is not realistic perhaps. But setting that kind of figure will look so much scary and we might think unrealistic. But it requires imagination. Imagination requires us to think, think beyond our beliefs. And to think beyond our beliefs we need hope for the future. 

Type C goals require us to change the way we think, grow ourselves as a person, and do things that we have never been done before. It requires us to get out of our comfort zone. We have been in the comfort zone for so long, that we felt so comfortable being there. It is time to set a slightly different challenge to ourselve. But if you asked me, to achieve RM1 billion is still not something impossible. We still can asked a Billionaire how they did it. We can learn and we still can figure things out. But going to Mars, we have no reference point what-so-ever. Never did people went to Mars. So it requires us to think different, be creative and keep on pushing.

So, have you set your goals? Did you set Type A, or B? Or have you consider setting Type C goals? 

#johanirwan 

Malaysia Sejahtera - The solution for Sustainable Development of the 21st Century

Last Sunday I had the opportunity to attend the Perdana Discourse Series organized by Perdana Leadership Foundation featuring keynote speaker Prof. Emeritus Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak with the title The Power of Youth: Building a Better Future in the Face of Economic, Social and Environmental in the Anthropocene Era. 

He started his speech by thanking the emcee and talked about how the introduction in his CV was too glorified. He doesn't want people to be impressed with his CV because, in the academic world, too many people focus too much on their credentials, but the moment they open their mouths to speak, nothing worth listening to. He wants people to judge him by the content of his speech, which I was really impressed by at the end of the speech.

Here are some of the insights that I gained:

Bagaimana Nak Tingkatkan Prestasi Pekerja?

Baru-baru ini saya buat sesi coaching dengan salah sebuah corporate client. Ada beberapa slot yang saya sempat bertemu bual dalam coaching conversation. Salah sebuah peserta pada waktu pagi ada mengatakan beliau hanya menyumbang separuh sahaja komitmen semasa bekerja. Dan apabila saya tanya apa menyebabkan separuh sahaja, dia kata sebab bos dia.

Sebelah petang pula, dalam sesi yang berbeza ada seorang yang berkongsi dengan saya yang beliau sangat bersemangat untuk bekerja. Malah beliau sanggup bekerja lebih lagi kerana bos beliau sangat supportive dan memahami.

Apa yang menarik dengan kedua contoh ini adalah faktor kenapa mereka perform adalah bos mereka.

Gallup ada menulis buku hasil kajian terbesar mereka lakukan di peringkat global berkenaan 'The Future of Work' - tajuknya "It's The Managers" - Gallup Finds that the quality of managers and team leaders is the single biggest factor in your organization's long term success. 

Sebelum ini saya banyak membaca hasil survey faktor tertinggi kenapa seseorang itu resign daripada syarikat adalah kerana boss mereka. Pendek kata, boss adalah punca dan sekiranya kita dalam jawatan yang ada anak buah, kejayaan dan prestasi kerja anak buah kita sangat bergantung kepada kita.

Dalam video ini saya mengupas lebih lanjut kenapa kita ada ramai bos yang apa saya gelar 'bad boss' dan satu perkara yang boleh kita lakukan untuk menjadikan manager lebih baik agar mereka dapat memimpin anak buah mereka untuk menjadi top performer dalam organisasi mereka.

#johanirwan

Ringkasan video:

0:05 - Introduction 0:28 - 2 pekerja organisasi sama pengalaman berbeza prestasi berbeza 2:20 - Faktor yang mempengaruhi prestasi pekerja 3:05 - 3 sebab kenapa seseorang itu dinaikkan pangkat 5:15 - Satu tindakan yang managers boleh lakukan menurut cadangan dari Gallup 6:30 - Apa yang membuatkan seseorang itu mendapat kepuasan dalam bekerja 8:00 - Kesimpulan

Zoom Fatigue: Adakah Remote Working Economy Berkesan?

 

1. Mula pandemik covid-19, Zoom tiba-tiba menjadi satu platform paling famous seantero dunia. Ramai yang kata dunia akan berubah ke arah virtual.

2. Salah seorang sahabat saya berkata, selepas tamatnya pandemik beliau akan meminta client untuk bermesyuarat dengan zoom sahaja. Jimat masa travel, toll, parking dan sebagainya.

3. Malah pada bulan April, CEO Morgan Stanley berkata di masa hadapan, bank tak perlukan 'real-estate' yang banyak untuk beroperasi. "We've proven we can operate with no footprint" katanya.

4. Ini sedikit sebanyak memberi isyarat kurang baik pada pasaran hartanah. Bayangkan kalau semua boleh bekerja secara remote, apa perlunya bangunan pencakar langit untuk menempatkan pekerja yang work-from-home?

5. Tapi itu bulan empat. Sekarang rata-rata dah sampai tahap tepu dengan melihat skrin. Dalam erti kata lain, ramai yang mengalami 'Zoom Fatigue'. Malah banyak CEO syarikat besar yang pada mulanya menyokong meeting secara virtual, rata-rata complain dengan virtual meeting.

6. Virtual meeting kebanyakkannya bersifat transactional, dan tidak meransang pemikiran kreatif. CEO JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon berkata "there's no vital 'creative combustion' happening in virtual settings." Beliau menambah, "bringing people back to the office is paramount to fostering creativity."

Colored Brain, Organizational Culture, and Gamification - This is what I learn from Arthur Carmazzi

I recently interviewed Arthur Carmazzi to be the guest in my Perspektif Komunikasi Warna series. This is our 5th Episod and I invited the guru himself to talk about Colored Brain, how it started, the application and how an organization can create their working culture.

How it was started?

When Arthur venture into his business, the business does not took-off successfully and he ended up in debt. So he get a job in an organization in Singapore. After a few weeks working, he started to notice that people are blaming each other and very less cooperation among each team members. Worst than that, after several weeks he became one of them, blaming others and not giving cooperation.

Reflecting on it, that is not the way it supposed to be. He then did research on psychology and there are several findings. One of it leads to Colored Brain as a communication model. It provide instant results in the same orgsanization. Now the model has been use widely in various country.

He then created several other method on culture and how we can gamify our organization and create a high-performing culture.

Watch this video for our full interview and let me know what do you think.