How to make important decisions in life?

Life is about a series of decisions. Think about it, everything we do everyday involve decision making. Even what makes you read this blog is also a decision that you made probably a few seconds ago.

Research shows that when it comes to regret, 3/4 people regret things that they have never done before. Which means only 1/4 people is actually regret of things that they did, either failure or perhaps some silly things that they have done in their life.

One of the ways that I normally use in my training sessions is what I called visualization technique. Our mind is so powerful as compared to other creatures. We can bring our mind to the future or the past. We can just imagine things.

#SayaPejuang ...adakah anda seorang pejuang???

Sahabat saya Ahyat sedang berkongsi tentang erti pejuang

Satu perkara yang dikongsikan dengan saya pada pagi ini adalah tentang perjuangan. Ramai yang menyebut tentang perjuangan, tetapi adakah mereka sedar apakah itu perjuangan?

Siapa itu pejuang?
Mengapa kita perlu jadi seorang pejuang?

Jawapan ringkas: Seorang pejuang tidak takut akan bahaya.

Seorang pejuang tidak akan menyerah kalah apabila keadaan menjadi sukar.
Bagaimana kita boleh ambil konsep ini dalam perniagaan? Ramai yang berpendapat 2016 adalah tahun yang sukar. Dengan kejatuhan nilai ringgit, kejatuhan harga minyak, peningkatan kos sara hidup, dan pelbagai lagi. Ramai yang tidak jelas akan matlamat sudah tentu akan beralih arah dalam menjalankan apa juga perniagaan.

Tetapi seorang pejuang akan teruskan perjuangan mereka kerana ada sesuatu yang memberikan tenaga umpama dynamo di dalam badan. Mereka tidak akan keluar daripada masalah tersebut untuk mencari peluang yang lain, sebaliknya mereka akan terus memperjuangkan apa yang mereka perjuangkan selama ini, kerana mereka ada tujuan (Purpose). Tujuan inilah yang memberikan satu tenaga dari dalam - The BIG WHY.

Duit sebagai faktor motivasi?
Mungkin ramai menganggap duit adalah satu faktor motivasi. Saya bersetuju, tetapi saya tidak bersetuju sekiranya duit dianggap motivasi paling utama. Ungkapan 'cash is king' hanya benar dalam situasi-situasi tertentu.

Leading Effectively in the 21st Century - What can we learn from Top Companies for Leaders?

Leading in the 21st century could not only rely on 20th century wisdom. The environment is changing. The new reality is that we are living in a VUCA environment - volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

AON Hewitt did a study on Top Companies for Leaders® and find out that top companies have certain characteristics:

1. They have self-aware leaders  who understand their personal strength and weaknesses, and use this information to become more effective leaders of others.

2. Build resilience in their leaders through stretch experience, encouragement and support for taking risks.

3. Identify and build engaged leaders who connect strongly with their people, and the team to organization's purpose and mission.

Problem Solving vs Problem Finding

I read an article of what employers want from the graduates. And one of the answer is problem solving skills. Is problem solving still the critical skills that industry really want?

There is an interesting research that explains this. In his book - To Sell is Human, Daniel Pink explain on a study by the Conference Board -  a well regarded Business Group in the US. They provide a survey to Employers and Education Superintendent, and asked them to rate the cognitive capacities that are most important on today's workforce.

Interestingly, both group are not on the same page. Education superintendent ranked 'Problem Solving' as no.1 but the employer executives ranked that as no. 8. They ranked the most important skills are 'Problem Identification.'

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.

Wisdom from the President - Prof. Tan Sri Dr. Ghauth Jasmon

Prof. Ghauth was the founding president of Multimedia University, the first private university in Malaysia, where I earn my engineering degree. With his leadership the university grew dramatically and ranked at top 200 universities in Asia in less than 10 years of it's establishment. 

Me with Prof. Ghauth and Prof. Rasat

Today I have a chance to meet him at our MMU Alumni Homecoming celebration. My intention is to meet some old folks during the university time, but very less from my batch were turned up for the event. However, from the short speech of Prof. Ghauth sharing his thought and wisdom makes me feel that the event was very fruitful to me at least.

Prof. Ghauth was the vice-chancellor of the University Malaya after building MMU from scratch for 11 years. He said that he was blessed because he was able to be at the top position of both public and private universities in Malaysia. He shared some of his view including the different challenge that he has to face running both universities.

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.