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."

Wisdoms from the HR Guru - 3 things that I learn from Dave Ulrich

Dave Ulrich is world's no. 1 guru in Human Resource. He always talks about HR Transformation and how HR can play even a more important role in order to help organization to thrive. I have the opportunity to spend a day listening to Dave Ulrich a year ago, but today I want to share some of his wisdom from this short video clip that just been uploaded by The Leaderonomics Show.

1. HR is not about HR. HR is about helping the business win

The problem with most HR is we look at HR as another process in the organization. HR hires candidate, arrange interviews, trains them, pay their salary and take care of their welfare. But HR should play a better role than that. We should look at HR as a major component to help the business succeed. I believe this is a very good mindset, because if we think this way, it will totally change the way we do things. If we hire, we want to hire someone to meet the overall goals of the organization, not just putting another headcount in the department.

In order to do that, HR directors need to involve in the business side of the organization. To really understand where the business is heading and to provide resources to support that bigger purpose of the organization, to provide the right training to increase the competency of the people to achieve the objectives, as well as to put on compensation plans that align with overall organizational direction.

Example given, like in Google, the direction in order for Google to be successful is they have to innovate by creating something new. The HR director, Laszlo Bock tells their people that they are allowed to use 20% of their time to try new creative things, something that they have never done before. This is to create an environment to support the bigger purpose of the organization which is to innovate. On the other hand, Amazon has a different strategy, they want their people to be more discipline.

5 Marketing Lessons that I learned from Jay Abraham

"There are only two things in a business that make money - innovation and marketing. 

Everything else is cost."

- Peter Drucker

A photo of me with a replica of Jay Abraham

I attended a session with Jay Abraham, the legendary marketing guru. Some might called him the marketing wizard because of his ability to think of marketing strategies in any kind of business. While I posted some of the photos on the social media, some of my friends were asking me, "what did you learned from Jay Abraham?" 

To answer that questions, I decided to create this post so that it will benefits more people. I list down 5 most important lessons that I learn from that session.

1. Force Multiplier Effect
This is a strategies that Jay mentioned he model it from the military. Imagine you are in military, your enemy will have a certain kind of defence. It is not easy to break through that defence. But if you have a strategy to attack from multiple angle, you might have a better results.

This is what Jay means by Force Multiplier Effect. They attack the enemy from many force.
The goal is for that combined effect destroy the resistance.

Why Job Description is outdated why should we replace it with Job Mission

Many organization provide their employee with Job Description (JD). Every job description will tell people on what to do and sometimes, perhaps how to do it.  In my humble opinion, this work well in the past where compliance is very much needed.

But in this competitive environment, things have changed. People don't do routine job too much now, because the job nowadays is not to produce a certain set of rules. If the job requires a routine of a set of rules, a machine or a system could easily replace the job. The jobs nowadays require people to think, solve problems and move within the company's direction.

Today, job description is also been use for a person to define their territory and protect themselves from doing things out of their boundaries. If things were not clearly stated in one job description, they just can say that it is not part of their job, based on their JD. In case that a particular task was not define in anybody's job description, chances are that thing might be left over and no one to be blame.

Job Mission
What we need in describing a role of an employee is a Job Mission (JM). Job Mission is more about the goal of your role, which align to the greater goal of an organization. Job Mission provide empowerment of an employee where they will do whatever it takes to complete their mission. In this world, we are moving from compliance to engagement. We don't just want people to comply with our standards and rules, but we want to engage them so they will stay longer with us, provide the brain in providing solutions and add value to the whole organization.

High Income Nation - Are we training our people in the right direction?

Malaysia is moving towards high income nation. To realize the vision 2020, we set our target to achieve GNI per capita of US$15,000. One of the initiative is to train our people. Training has been seen as effective method to upgrade the skills and knowledge of the people. However, are we training our people with the right skills?


Upskilling and Reskilling
Malaysia is focusing so many initiatives to produce high income workers. Among top initiatives of the government including upskilling and reskilling. This is expected to produce a high income workforce through high skill workers.

The linkage between technical skills and soft-skills

According to Carnegie Institute of Technology, 85% of financial success is depends on one personality and the ability to communicate, negotiate and lead. Shockingly, only 15% of it due to technical knowledge. In other words, success in financial depends very much on soft-skills or what I called leadership skills.

This is not the only studies that has been done related to skills. In my previous post, I have mentioned that skills contribute on 14% - 22% (based on industries and descipline). Attitude plays a bigger role, which is the personality part.

Knowing this facts, are we in the right direction of building a high income nation with high income people?

Knowledge is power - Is it true or just a myth?

Knowledge is power

Albert Einstein is a powerful figure
because of his knowledge

When I was a kid, people said that knowledge is power. So we must have knowledge in order for us to be successful. Is it true or just a myth? Well, I think that it might be true for the past generation because those who have knowledge at that time are those who are successful. Think about it, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Al-Farabi. These are those who make it big and his name was made known to the rest of the world. They don’t create any product or services, but they founded some knowledge that most of us still learn in this new world.

Things already changed

However, somewhere in 2009, I heard in a seminar, the speaker said “‘Knowledge is power’ is the biggest lie that I ever heard. Knowledge is potential power, but knowledge with application is power.” Well at that time I think that it make sense. If you have the knowledge but you did nothing with it you are absolutely added no value to people. I have studied engineering for 5 years but I am no good engineer because I only practice it for only 3 years and that knowledge that I have now, doesn’t make me any powerful. However, I don’t believe that the mantra ‘knowledge is power’ is the biggest lie. I just think that it was outdated. It was true before our generation, but because of the environment have changed, knowledge is power is no more relevant. What are more powerful is to take action from our knowledge. Because there are information overload due to the internet, we don’t have to be knowledgeable, but we just need to know how to get that knowledge. And most importantly is what we do with that knowledge. The key word is to take action.

What are the impact?

Looking towards the trend now, I do think that everybody can obtain knowledge easily. Universities in the past concentrating on providing knowledge to people. In the past, the bigger the library the more reputable the university was. But nowadays, people are looking at what the university can produce. Some university changed their theme to ‘Where knowledge is applied.’ The more a university can produce marketable graduate, the more powerful the reputation of the university. Not only grade, but what the graduate can contribute by the action that one might take. 

Innovation in Organizations

Typically in a start-up company, the level of innovation is very high. The founder have the vision of doing something different and they did things differently. However, when the company grew bigger, when the company became stable, most of the time they started to innovate less.

It is the entrepreneurship spirit in a start-up is what contributing to innovation. But how we can inculcate this in a corporate environment?

Intrapreneurship
The concept of intrapreneur is not a new term. Intrapreneurship can simply defined as behaving like an entrepreneur in a large organization. This include of assertive risk-taking, innovation and taking initiatives in doing new things differently.

The History
In 1976, in the article from The Economist, Norman Macrae predicted a few of business trends. One of them is “that dynamic corporations of the future be trying alternative ways of doing things in competition within themselves." He further suggest that "firms should not be paying people for attendance, but should be paying competing groups for modules of work done." In 1982, also in The Economist, Macrae suggested the "confederation of intrapreneurs."

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?)

The Power of Imagination: Why Companies Should Reward on Imagination.

The World is Changing

In the 90's people always talk about Productivity and Quality. These were the drivers at that time and there were a lot of activities to encourage people to be productive at the same time produce the best quality. Hence, quality and productivity is the famous mantra then. To ensure this, the government took an initiative and establish the National Productivity Corporation (NPC now known as MPC or Malaysian Productivity Corporation) and they produce activities such as QCC (Quality Control Circle).

Now, people no longer stress into productivity and quality. That is already becoming commodity and it is consider something which you must do. But people started to look into new thing which is Innovation. To fuel this the Government setup an Agency called AIM (Agensi Inovasi Malaysia or Malaysian Innovation Agency). The QCC activity has been rebrand to ICC (Innovative and Creative Circle). Everyone now is talking about innovation. Those who want to compete in the market now need this ever than before.

But Innovation is the end result. If you produce something innovative, then only you can consider yourself innovative. But how can we become innovative? How do we cultivate innovative environment?

Watch this video below