I am always amazed at the capacity people have for taking one aspect of what someone is saying and treating it as the entire message. I see this so often on social media that I actually dread participating in certain discussions! We have been told so often to speak up and make ourselves heard that […]
We have all, I suppose, heard of “constructive conflict”. Do you think it exists? When was the last time you had some “constructive conflict”? Did you feel as though you were in conflict with others? It has been said that when you have more than one person in an organization, disagreements are inevitable. Therefore, the […]
I might be attracting the ire of some people with this post, but that’s an occupational hazard. Mind you, I’ve had many pets over the years. Dogs, mostly, but also mynahs, rabbits, guinea pigs, white mice, budgerigars, tortoises, fish, spiders and others I shall not name for the sake of the queasy of stomach. Did […]
Aye, they do indeed. When you look at someone, whether that someone be man, woman or child, what do you look at first? Physical features? Clothing? Shoes? Watches? Pens? Do you look at them overall and form your first impressions? Who among you reading this looks at the person’s eyes first? The eyes have been […]
Great leaders are those who lead by example, who influence others for the better, who inspire others towards excellence and who hold a place dear in our hearts. By the same token, great leaders ought to be great natural networkers, for is not networking about relationships and influence? Is it not about the fact that […]
Is networking important to your business? To your job in the company you’re working at right now? Is it important to you personally? Do you think it’s important to people generally? Why or why not, and what IS networking, anyway? When I refer to networking, I mean the establishing and sustaining of healthy, profitable relationships. […]
I’ve just completed a day and a half facilitating a teambuilding session under the auspices of my allies Fish Camp Learning Sdn Bhd. Participants were put through their paces with both challenging outdoor and indoor activities, including sea rafting, and had the opportunity to know each other much better. They were very cohesive and definitely […]
We are constantly bombarded by messages of all genres promising us success if we would change our thinking, take massive positive action, sign up for some talk or course, do things like rappel down the side of our office building, walk over hot coals, faithfully and diligently take our supplements, perform our exercises with great […]
I’m sure you’ve heard many gurus telling you not to work IN the business and to start to work ON the business. Bless them, they’re telling you to do the right thing. Trouble is, they’re not telling it to you in the proper way. We need to do BOTH. When an artist is working on a canvas, he steps back […]
Yes, you read it right. Quotes like “The Greatest Good of the Greatest Number” sound very good and noble. Think about it for a while and you realize that it is not the greatest number but the smallest number! After all, pyramids end at a point at the top, don’t they? And those at the bottom […]
Remember the “Twilight Zone” TV series? Purportedly about mysterious events and goings-on in the realm of the paranormal? Well, there’s a new zone, and it’s called the Comfort Zone. So much hype has been created around it, so I decided to weigh in. First of all, you can’t always be living outside your comfort zone. You […]
Download the pdf. Hi, I’m Elijah Lim. Mirror, mirror, on the wall…who’s the best assessment of them all? Now, you will realize that there are many psychometric tools, there are many leadership assessments, personality tests, team assessments, you name it. Love them or hate them, one thing’s for certain – they’re here to stay, they’ve […]
There is a notion that seems to be rather ubiquitous. That notion is that personal values must be in alignment with organizational values or clashes between values may occur, resulting in impaired work performance. Excuse me. Saying something like that reminds me of what I read somewhere, Harvey MacKay, I think, which asks “Have you […]
Download the pdf. Hi, this is Elijah Lim, and to borrow from what Tweety the yellow bird said, “I tot I taw a puddy tat!” Now, we’re quite familiar with that expression and what does that mean? Well, I’d like to discuss today something about what we see, how we interpret stuff, and what we […]
Download the pdf. Hi, this is Elijah Lim. Today I would like to ask the question “Is Business War?” And most of us have of heard of expressions like this: “Business is war”, “Business in the trenches”, “We have to outperform the competition”, “We have to kill the competition”, “We have to absorb them”, […]
In Singapore, a few companies have made the news because they posted job ads worded in such a manner as to imply a preference for foreign workers over Singaporeans. This violated some legislation which stipulated that companies ought to have a certain percentage of Singaporeans already in their headcount before they could proceed to hire […]
View the pdf. This is an edited transcript. Hi, this is Elijah Lim – Who’s Afraid Of Hierarchical Orgs? Or hierarchical structures? Now, we’re all quite familiar with hierarchical structures. What it means is that usually there’s someone at the top, he has maybe three, four, two, people directly reporting to him, and each of […]
Many of us are very action-oriented. We want to get things done right now. We want to be seen to be doing something. Doing something is better than doing nothing. And many of us like to quote General George Patton, “A good plan, vigorously executed right now, is far better than a perfect plan next […]
Download the pdf. Hi, this is Elijah Lim. “What do we learn from movies?” Now, most of us, if not all of us, have watched a movie or two in our lifetime. And of course, movies are meant to entertain us, meaning that when we go to movies, we are amused. Now, the word “amuse” […]
This is not a word-for-word transcript, but is the same in essence. Business Insider ran an article called “This Chart Shows The Relationship Between Hours Worked And Productivity” on 06 Oct 2013. It purports to show that productivity goes up when people spend less time at work. It’s probably so. I’m just not sure if […]
Download the pdf. This is not a word-for-word transcript, but the essence is the same. I came across a LinkedIn article called “Key Reasons Delegating Is SO Difficult and What To Do About It” on 07 Oct 2013. I’d written something about “Deliberate delegation” before, and this post caught my eye. It seems that the […]
Download the pdf. This is not a word-for-word transcript, but is essentially the same content. Anyone who is in business is automatically in Sales, Marketing and Customer Relations. If you’re not into all these three, you aren’t really in business. Sales and Marketing are closely related. You could call Marketing the Strategy and Sales the […]
When times are tough, meaning when sales aren’t as good as they could have been, or, more accurately, when profits aren’t what you’d expect, then you might have the tendency to “cut costs.” After all, that’s what everyone else does, isn’t it? Stop it! Are you “everyone else”? No, you are you. Now, you know […]
I take it that lots of people dream constantly of “…going where no man has gone before…” The desire for a unique greatness is deeply ingrained in the human spirit. This is reflected in the way organizations describe their visions and goals. Strategy is conceived in order to direct how best to get to that […]
Semper moronis. No, you won’t find that in the Latin dictionary, I made it up. “Always moronic.” I was at a Roundtable for Customer Service yesterday. One of the observations shared was that people seem to trust their social media to the nth degree, going by the numbers. It seems that people are more likely […]
Do you have issues with strategy implementation? In simple terms, how often do your plans actually translate into fruitful and profitable action? Have you found the execution of your plans to be smooth, or have they been nightmarish quagmires of frantic attempts to get the plan moving? Have your business units been able to cooperate […]
Ever had someone talking AT you? You know what I mean – someone going on and on and on, and you’re either not wanting to listen, the topic is irrelevant to you, or it’s someone higher up the ladder telling you things you’d rather not hear. How did you feel about that? How would you […]
References: Battlefield Detectives – Massacre at Waterloo Gartner On Big Data: Everyone’s Doing It, No One Knows Why Why the CMO Will Soon Have a Better Pulse on the Business than the CFO Previous posts on Big Data and related Generals are, well, generalists, in a sense of the word. Able to zoom out in […]
I came across an article on Harvard Business Review today called “Less-Confident People Are More Successful.” I wonder if there was any misunderstanding about what “confident” really means. Looking up the etymology dictionary, we see that “confident” is from: If the writer, Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, intended for “confident” to lean more toward the side of smugness and […]
What comes to your mind when the word “Fort” is mentioned? Riders galloping out the gate? Desperate last stands? These images and impressions have been reinforced time and again by Tinseltown movies. Are they true? Of course! Partially. Do you know what a fort is really for? Of course. A fort is sited, meaning positioned, […]
This is a short clip about character and competence. If I had to choose between either, I would always go for character. The transcript is below the embedded video, and you can also download the transcript in pdf. Transcript for Character and Competence. Hi, I’m Elijah Lim. Today, I’d like to talk to you a […]
F Spencer Chapman’s book observed that the jungle doesn’t favour any side. It’s just the jungle. The environment you operate in doesn’t favour you or your competitors either. It’s just the business environment. Big Data? You got it! The data is all there, all available for you. It’s how you choose to see it, organize […]
I don’t know about you, but that sounds like an oxymoron to me. What is “wealth”? Health? Happiness? Large portfolios? The 5 Cs in great abundance? If you have great wealth and you think that your wealth can be destroyed, you are a very poor man. True wealth cannot be destroyed. What is destroyed, what […]
This is especially for all you positive affirmation junkies out there. I know you’re there – I can feel the hate coming towards me. Pendulums are very useful things. In clocks and other gadgets requiring the services of simple harmonic motion. In a way, they illustrate what life is, continuously swinging from one extreme to […]
The video gives a good illustration of how interconnected we really are. I do not agree with the worldviews expressed, particularly references to evolution, but I thought it was still a good illustration. In previous posts, I’ve alluded to something like this with Spider Webs, 3D Spider Webs, if you will. I think it is […]
Sin is a monster of such awful mien That to be hated needs but to be seen But seen too oft, and full in face We at first wonder, then pity, then embrace This familiar poem reminds us of the power of repetition, the power of reinforcement, the power of inoculation. Being creatures of habit, […]
The sense of taste is the focus of a billion dollar industry. Although our senses of taste and smell aren’t supposed to be as discriminating as those of many species of animals, many of us still take pride in being more “discerning” than our fellows where tastes and aromas are concerned. We revel in being […]
In one of Tom Clancy’s novels, a Russian agent has been knocked unconscious and is being held by some Rumanian operatives. In order to verify that the unconscious man is, indeed, Russian, the Rumanian operatives rouse him and ask him a non-threatening question in Russian. The half-conscious man responds in Russian, and precipitates his swift […]
How can a job be destroyed? It is like saying that a road is being diverted. You don’t divert roads, you divert traffic. You realign roads. Rivers can be diverted, aircraft can be diverted, but not roads. Jobs cannot be destroyed. They get obsolescent or obsolete. (Yes, there is a slight difference, go look it […]
Sometimes I hear the phrase “You can bring a horse to the water, but you can’t force a horse to drink.” I invariably reply “Yes, but you can give salt to the horse to make it thirsty.” Developing healthy appetites is something like that. Hunger is something natural, but appetite is learned. We all get […]
CIPD podcast 67 discusses “Innovation and HR.” We discuss innovation as if it were something unusual, something that came into existence only recently, and yet innovation has always been part of us and, indeed, is all around us. Yet we tend to view it the same way we view natural processes like childbirth and breastfeeding. […]
Lack of appetite due to a fear of getting fat. That’s the commonly known anorexia nervosa. So, what’s anorexia sophia? Well, sophia means wisdom. Anorexia sophia is a lack of appetite for wisdom. There might be a hunger and a craving for other things, but the appetite for wisdom seems to be a rare condition. […]
Quotes. Positive inspirational quotes. Negative demotivational quotes. Humorous quotes. Deep thinking quotes. Leadership quotes. Anonymous quotes. We all love quotes, don’t we? Quotes capture the essence of an idea, a concept, a state of being. They help to point out our foibles in ways that don’t make us feel so badly about ourselves. If you remember […]
Authority. You look up and squint so you see it more clearly. You stop in your tracks as it rumbles so nearly. The things that you wish for, you hold them so dearly. Yes, authority has a way of eliciting a range of different responses from different people at different times and seasons. Do you […]
Fairness. There are two underlying thoughts that accompany the concept. The first is “If I can’t have it, neither should anyone else.” The second is “Everyone has it, so should I.” You disagree? Think of popular culture. There is a line in a song which goes “If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody, […]
It is a common saying nowadays that if someone is under-performing in a job, it is due more to a job mismatch than to the presence of issues the person in the job may have. The theory is that, if a person is a good fit with the job, with the organization, with the people, […]
Do you know what a plow pan is? It’s when you plough the land crop after crop, season after season. A hardened layer of earth soon forms below the deepest point where your plow plows. If this is not broken up periodically using deep rakes, the plow pan prevents water from going through into the […]
One of the most coveted titles in the world of work might actually be “Chief”, if we go by the numbers. Chief Executive Officer. Chief Operating Officer. Chief Marketing Officer. Chief Information Officer. Chief Technology Officer. Chief This. Chief That. So many Chiefs. Too few Indians. Sounds like Humpty Dumpty, if you ask me. An […]
Big Data. It has become a household word. Some are excited by it. Some dread it. Some feel that it invades their privacy, as though privacy were not the preserve of the War Councils of nations, or in corporate planning rooms, or in the homes of people. What comes to your mind when you see the […]
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