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."

Music and It's Application in Learning

Last year, as I went to the new IOI City Mall, in one of the home furnishing store I just have this mood of buying. The environment was set in such a way that people will ignite their sense of buying things because they give the feeling of comfort and elegance. I look at the sofa, it was really tempting for me to bring home one. The blue blanket was like waving it's hand asking me to bring home the whole bedding set.

As I get myself into the conscious mode, I noticed the music that they use was actually playing the role of putting someone emotion to a certain state so that it will ignite the mood of those who shop in the store. Everything was planned well. Music can really give some impact in the mood of a person.

People using music for different purposes. If you watch movies, you will feel the emotion of panic, romance or fantasy by the background of the music. Try to look in a horror movie and shut down the volume. You won't have that kind of effect, and you might totally eliminate the whole emotion of fear and your mind might start to think logic. Even question, why the director did such and such.

Using the right music to accelerate learning
In training, most people use music as part of their tools. However, some trainers use a certain music which inappropriate in terms of timing and wrong type of music. It will give a different impact and in some cases, participants might get confused subsconciously. I was in this training programme, with this good trainer. At the very end of the training, he put on a song for an activity. I just can't feel myself suit because the music used was just not right for that particular activity.

Inspirasi dari pengasas EMKAY Group - Tan Sri Mustapha Kamal

Tan Sri Datuk (Dr) Mustapha Kamal merupakan salah seorang yang tidak asing lagi dalam dunia hartanah di Malaysia. Beliau merupakan pengerusi EMKAY Group, MK Land Holdings Berhad, Setia Haruman Sdn Bhd dan beberapa buah syarikat yang lain. Pada 26 Oktober 2013, Yayasan Universiti Multimedia telah dijemput untuk ke sebuah sesi bersama Tan Sri MK dan saya bersyukur kerana berpeluang untuk turut serta dalam lawatan tersebut. Seramai 37 pelajar menghadiri sesi yang penuh dengan inspirasi ini.

Tan Sri merupakan seorang yang sangat rendah diri. Beliau membahasakan dirinya sebagai Pak Cik kepada pelajar-pelajar. Beliau memberikan beberapa nasihat yang beliau rasakan perlu untuk beliau sampaikan kepada anak-anak muda. Disini suka untuk saya berkongsi dengan rakan-rakan pembaca untuk manfaat bersama.

Sebagai Manusia kita mempunyai nikmat berupa pilihan
Antara nikmat yang dinikmati oleh semua manusia ialah kita boleh buat pilihan. Dalam kehidupan, bermacam-macam pilihan yang boleh kita buat. Dan setiap pilihan yang kita buat akan menentukan siapa kita.

"The choice you make, makes you."

Dunia diluar sana adalah dunia yang kejam. Mereka tidak memandang sekiranya anda tidak mempunyai nama, jawatan dan pangkat. Itulah realitinya.

Cara Mencari Rezeki Yang Halal
Terdapat dua cara untuk mencari rezeki yang halal:
1. We have to do - kita perlu buat.
2. We want to do - kita mahu buat.

Sekiranya kita memilih what we  want to do, ianya less stressful. Kurang tekanan dan kita boleh hadapi segala cabaran kerana kita ingin membuatnya. Bukan terpaksa membuatnya.

Self-motivated
Sekiranya kita membuat sesuatu berdasarkan what we want to do kita akan bermotivasi secara sendirinya. What we want to do sangat berkait rapat dengan bakat semulajadi. Setiap orang ada bakat semulajadi. Cuba kita suruh Dato' Nicole David bermain badminton. Walaupun sama seperti skuasy memegang reket, beliau mungkin tidak boleh bermain dengan baik, sebaik beliau bermain skuasy. Sama juga kesnya sekiranya kita menyuruh Dato' Lee Chong Wei bermain skuasy.

Best Practices are Stupid?

Well, the title sounds controversial. Yes, this is the title of the book written by Stephen Shapiro. He is the type that would challenge the status quo and promote the culture of innovation. Well true enough, if we follow what everybody is doing, we will become a mediocre. And he got his argument to back-up his statement. Steve Jobs said Leadership is about innovation. And leaders should not be a follower to follow what others did well. Furthermore, the best practice might not suit to our environment.

Innovation distinguished between a leader and a follower - Steve Jobs

Face it, the world is changing. As my previous post the world no longer looking for productivity or quality. If we are looking into that, following the best practice might help. However, we are now looking at Innovation. Innovation is creating something new, something different. But if we follow the traditional wisdom that worked in the past, how do you expect us to be different? How can we be innovative?

Latest Book by Stephen Shapiro

5 topics that has been discussed by Stephen Shapiro. (Watch the video at the end of this post) These 5 topics are:

1) Stop Asking for Ideas
2) Don't Think Outside the Box - Build a Better Box
3) Hire People You Don't Like
4) Stop Praising People
5) Expertise is the Enemy of Innovation

STOP ASKING FOR IDEAS
As we asked for ideas, people will contribute the ideas as many as they can. In the BP oil spill case, 123,000 submission of ideas. But guess how many ideas that really count? About a dozen. This means that 99.99% of the ideas goes to the drain. Think of how much cumulative time were wasted for people to think, input and the staff to screen and debate those ideas?

In engineering we studied signal-to-noise ration (SNR). In real life, the signal is things that really matters and noise is things that does not matter. Output is no good if the noise is too high. And most organizations are spending time for things that does not matter.

How to do?
Frame something that is solvable and let people contribute their ideas within that parameters. This will help people to focus. We don't need everybody to contribute in order to make the best ideas. But if that small group can focus, they can find great solutions without wasting to much of time.

Tony Fernandes Dreaming Big doing the impossible at Global Malaysia Series

Tan Sri Tony Fernandes is the man who need no introduction. Everyone knows him for the success of the budget airline Airasia. Not just Airasia, he also has so many businesses from telecommunication, insurance, budget hotels, Formula 1, football and recently the reality TV show the Apprentice. Last week I was inspired when I saw him live at Global Malaysia Series (GMS). Being a great entrepreneur, he is the perfect person to talk about how to bring you business to global. He is indeed a Blue Brain that has made it big. His speech is clearly blue and so much people oriented.

Here I would like to share some of the points that I jotted down:

- You must be good at your own country first.
You should be good at your product and business model - at merit. Not because of you know somebody in the government or have cable. Or have sugar daddy to support your business. If you are good at your country, you are good everywhere (with some finetune of course).

- There is no recipe. But if you don't try, you don't know.
Most people have good idea. But most people don't even try their ideas.

- Malaysian parents try to push their kids at one direction.
Tony explains that when he was a baby, his grand parent already set him to be a doctor. It was the culture in Malaysia that parents want their kids to follow the traditional "go to school, get a good grade, get a good job." Become a doctor, engineer, lawyer or accountant.

- Don't listen to people's advice
Previously, Tony was running a music business. Before he started Airasia, people advice him not to jump into this business. Stick to his forte which is music industry. He don't have any experience in aviation industry. But if he listen to people's advice, now he might be in Petaling Street fighting on the piracy issue.

Copycat: Shortcut to Success - Why should we re-invent the wheel?

We Live in a World of Copycats.

As part of human being, we are naturally the creature of copycat. We copy from the Cradle to the Grave! Copycatting starts the day we were born. We copy the language we speak, the food we eat, the way we walk and the way we dress. When we were in primary school, we were taught to copy alphabets. When we grew older, we copy how others drive a car.

James Baldwin once said:

 "Children have never been very good at listening to their elders. But they have never failed to imitate them."

If copycat is part of our nature, then,

Why we are not good at Copying? 

You Don't Need Money, You Need A Better Strategy

One of the key take-away during the recent National Achievers' Congress 2013 is from Peter Sage. The concept that he introduced was 'Capital vs Initiatives'
How you can get what you want without paying for it!

I  don't need money. I NEED A BETTER STRATEGY!

What does he mean by that?

First of all, the question that we need to ask is:
"How can I add value?"
And we need to ensure the value is really what others wanted.

To illustrate this, he gave a few example:

1. The Flower Shop
One day there was a flower shop to be sold. They are selling at $50,000 and the buyer who wanted to buy doesn't have the money. He went and asked for loan but no one wanted to lend the money. (familiar with this situation?)

How to enhance your creativity to solve problems

Each and every one of us is creative in one way or another. There are so many courses out there that shows you how to think creatively. There are simpler ways comparing to use other sophisticated tools to solve problems - and it is proven by academic research.

We are more creative when we think of others

Have you ever has a problem and you ask others around. Suddenly that others (might be your friends or family members) provide you a solutions to that problem that you might not think of before. And it makes sense... Vice versa have you ever have someone approaching you on their problem, and as a third party you are able to come out with solutions to that problem. It's a simple solution, but why can't he/she think of it? 

Why are these things happening and how we can use the principle to get the best out of our ability to become creative in solving problems?

Professors Evan Polman and Kyle Emich has conducted a research to asked 137 undergraduates the following problem: