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.

Leadership Lessons dari DG Dr. Noor Hisham

Krisis sememangnya membuka peluang untuk melahirkan pemimpin. "Turbulent Times Build Better Leaders," kata Robin Sharma dalam buku beliau 'The Leader Who Had No Title.'

Salah seorang pemimpin yang menyerlah semasa krisis Covid-19 adalah Datuk Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah, satu figura yang tak perlu diperkenalkan lagi dalam kalangan rakyat Malaysia.

Di sini saya ingin mengupas tentang kepimpinan Dr. Noor Hisham dalam mendepani krisis Covid-19.

1. Beliau seorang yang kompeten dan komited.

Dalam Situational Leadership Model ada dinyatakan dua perkara penting dalam readiness level adalah Competent dan Committed. Competent merujuk kepada pengalaman, kemahiran dan pengetahuan. Seorang yang kompeten membolehkan mereka melakukan tanggungjawab yang baik, manakala komitmen adalah faktor motivasi. Mereka yang komited akan pergi 'extra-mile' seperti apa yang beliau lakukan, kerja keras tanpa mengira waktu kerana komitmen beliau yang tinggi.

2. Beliau sentiasa kelihatan tenang dan penggunaan ayat yang merendah diri.

Beliau sentiasa memberikan kredit kepada team. Dalam surat yang beliau balas kepada Lara Khadijah McAfee yang tular, beliau menyatakan beliau tidak melakukan tugas keseorangan, sebaliknya beliau ada pasukan yang hebat bersama beliau untuk membantu negara. Ini apa yang dikatakan Level 5 Leadership. Dalam buku Good To Great tulisan Jim Collins, kajian beliau mendapati syarikat yang berjaya melompat (make the leap) dari Good to Great adalah syarikat yang ada Level 5 Leadership. Apa beza Level 4 dan Level 5? Satu perkara iaitu 'humility' (perasaan rendah diri). Level 4 mungkin leader yang bagus dan boleh deliver, tapi level 5 bukan sekadar bagus tetapi juga merendah diri.

3. Kuasa Komunikasi yang bagus.

Komunikasi Warna - Perjalanan Penuh Liku

Komunikasi Warna telah diterbitkan pada Januari 2019. Tetapi perjalanan buku ini sebenarnya bermula pada tahun 2013 lagi.

Selepas saya membuat keputusan untuk berhenti kerja, salah satu KPI yang saya tetapkan untuk diri saya adalah dengan menulis sebuah buku. Pagi petang siang malam saya bertungkus lumus menulis. Bahkan saya masih ingat, semasa menunggu kereta diservis, saya bersama laptop menulis buku pada ketika tersebut.

Selepas siap menulis, saya pun pergi mencuba nasib kepada penerbit buku. Ada beberapa yang saya cuba untuk berhubung. Kebanyakkan tidak memberikan maklum balas. Dan salah satu daripadanya apabila saya menelefon pejabat, mereka bertanyakan manuscript. Saya jawab saya boleh emailkan. Sebelum itu, beliau bertanya penulisan saya berkenaan apa? Jawab saya Colored Brain. Terus beliau merespond, tajuk kamu ni tak boleh dijual. Saya kata, tapi puan belum tengok manuscript saya lagi. Katanya, takpe lah. Sebab tajuk kamu tu memang tak boleh dijual.

Tahun 2014, atas undangan salah seorang sahabat, saya menghadiri Open House Raya beliau di Shah Alam. Dan salah seorang jemputan beliau adalah pengasas kepada syarikat penerbit tadi. Saya pun sangat ghairah kerana beliau duduk makan di sebelah saya yang kebetulan kosong pada ketika itu.

Everyone Can Become A Leader

Everyone can become a leader. But that is not the question. The question is whether they want to or they don't. Leadership is a choice and I do believe that it is your responsibility to decide whether you want to be one, or you just want to follow someone, or some organization.

Tipping Point
Some people change after there was a situation that force them to change. I remembered Jim Rohn's story of how he changed after being broke and not able to buy a cookies from a girl scout. Worst, he was lying saying that he has one. That is his turning point of his life. Some people change because of frustration and some because of inspiration. Both are good change agents.

Vision and Mission
Most companies have this nice frame on the wall mentioning vision and mission. But some companies did it because all other companies have it, and it looks weird if they don't. Some did it because their consultant asked them to do so, without understanding the purpose of having it. To me, leaders must have a vision. Something that they wanted to change. From that vision, they create missions to support their intention. This will drive them internally to pursue their dreams. I believe people are not a lazy creature. They just don't have a clear vision of their life, or finding their purpose of their life.

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.

Steve Vai's advice on How to Become Successful

Steve Vai is one of my master idol in playing guitar. For those who know me during my Uni time, I am so much crazy about Vai. Why I like Steve compared to others such as Joe Satriani, Yngwie Malmsteen or John Petrucci? Owh... maybe about his Green Brained is more compatible with my Green Processor and the melody match. To me, his music has a story-line behind it and he is a great story teller. Not the technical part of playing the music or how structured the music should be.

Steve talks about Success

It's like the Law of Attraction - like-attract-like - Steve is now talking about success. He really sounds like a success guru motivating people to become successful - in his area. This video shows his advice on how you can become successful. Not only you can apply in playing guitar, but also in your life.

"Because the only thing that holding you back is the way you're thinking"

- Steve Vai

The summary of the video:

With the background song 'Whispering a Prayer', there are 5 things that I identified lessons that we can share together:

1. Identify What You Really Want - Like any successful people, Steve started with "We need to identify what it is that we really want! Because what ever it is we really want, that's gonna come out!" "Because that what you gonna do the best!" Do what you enjoy to do and you'll be doing the best!

Visionary Leadership - the Red Brain

Recently I have a talk with one of my good friend. He is from Indonesia. We talk about the development of our country and how Jakarta is different with Kuala Lumpur in terms of the traffic, facilities etc.

Some of our key-point of discussion is about leadership. Malaysian leadership have a vision which I totally agreed upon. The biggest example of this is the Wawasan 2020 (or Vision 2020). Wawasan 2020 was actually announced by our fourth Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad in 1991 - during the 6th Malaysian Plan. Wawasan 2020 is a 30 years plan, a plan that Tun introduce at the time he is not sure whether he will still be alive when it is achieved.

What makes a person a visionary?
Tun Dr. Mahathir is a red brain person. It is obvious in many ways.
- Red brain is very good at establishing long term planning. In other words, they are visionary.
- Tun is very blunt when addressing specific issue. This is because Tun focus on the objectivity of the issue. Not personal and not because he is insensitive.
- Tun is a very structured person. This is very obvious when you read his blog. Everything is very structured and he puts the clarity in every points he make.

Working With Different Colored Brain

In my life, as an employee I have some difficulties to work with people. Especially my superior. Once in a while, I have a good idea. For example, working in a company where training is part of our bread and butter, I do think that to upgrade the HRDF status of the company is important. We were at class C at that time. What stopping us to upgrade to class B was the TTT. Being a subsidiary of a University, we don't have trainer that parked under our payroll, which is one of the requirement of class B and of course to upgrade to class A we need to have 2 trainers.

Since we don't have any trainers inside the company (we outsource from our parent company most of the time), I proposed to my CEO to send me to the TTT course. I begin to explain why we need this to him. The result - he don't agreed. It is a five days course and there bound to be some problem if I leave the company for 5 days (and I realized how important I am to the company).

Frustrated, I just went back into my room and start talking to other colleagues. They were all agreed with me but somehow the boss just couldn't see.