SOS – Supply Of Supplication Supplicants the world over beam their SOS signals every day. They ask for love, appreciation, fulfillment, excitement, purpose, gratification and so forth. This is besides the need for air, water and food so they can go on living. Increasingly, wants disguised as needs are also broadcast as SOS. We call this […]
Inanities How often have you read a report about once-great entities now gone to the dogs? Have you noticed how often those entities are described as being “Victims of their own success”? What does that mean? I don’t know, do you? How do companies become “Victims of their own success”? After all, if your success […]
And Master of Some. Forget about the other second part of the phrase which says “and master of none.” Master of None? Says who? Now, of course, given the span of human life, it would not be easy for anyone to become a Jack of ALL trades, but isn’t mastering a few trades reasonable? Does mastering […]
Stay Calm and Read On. Did the title cause you some unease? I hope so! It might move you to take positive action so that you can have a life of genuine ease. What do I mean by that? We are becoming more and more addicted to creature comforts. We want things instantly. We want […]
“Look before you leap.” “Think before you act.” “Logic makes people think, emotion makes them act.” Yes, we’ve heard all these before. Some of us might even be living by them. Level-headedness is more the exception than the norm. “Go with the flow” is often taken to the extreme and becomes nothing more than impetuousness. […]
Change. The only constant. We need to change in order to survive. What a chimera! As if we don’t know how to change, what to change and when to change. We even know why change and what we want to change into! Or so we think. Change implies flexibility. Adaptability. Tolerance. Patience. Determination. Decisiveness. Deference. […]
Kate Thome wrote a three-part series on Executive Presence on LinkedIn recently. She discussed three kinds of observable behaviours which would indicate whether or not a person has that X-factor commonly known as Executive Presence. I call them tell-tale signs. Uptalk. This is when every statement you make sounds like a question from someone with a […]
A comrade of mine recalled an incident when he was training cadets. It happened to be an offensive operations exercise, and the cadets had fared very badly. During the main debrief, which was of course after all the After-Action-Reviews (AARs), “Hotwashes”, or what I personally have come to disdain as “Hogwashes” and so forth. When the […]
~ Take a couple of Aspirin and come see me in the morning ~ A Doctor Recently, NUS Business School produced a video which featured, besides Singapore Airlines and one or two other companies, the Narayana Hrudayalaya Heart Hospital in Bangalore, India. What had happened was that the hospital had industrialized open-heart surgery to the nth […]
Do you buy on emotion? Not the best thing to do, although experts tell us that is what we do. Buy rationally. The good emotions will come because of that!
Everybody thinks they’re lucky and everyone wants to be lucky. Fortune does favour the bold. The bold are prepared. That’s why they’re bold.
Is it wet? Is it dry? Does it matter? Have we become so used to our rut we refuse to get out of it?
Are systems and automation wonders going to solve all your business issues? Hardly. YOU are! For that, you need to automate consciously so that your business can operate at the unconscious competence level. So you can focus on relationships.
Feeling blase? Feeling, as some put on their social media statuses, “meh”? Your mouth has a lot to do with that! Switch from “Blah-say” to “Bon-say”!
There are many advantages you stand to gain when you hire veterans. Treat them well and you will gain even more!
You might be having some trouble being creative once people start referring to you as an “expert.” That’s because we as human beings tend to let the “expert” label go to our heads. Oh, sure, we all know that pride goes before a fall and all that, but we still let such compliments inflate our […]
I have the military to thank for this concept. That is, when you’ve been assigned a mission, you are expected to assume that all resources necessary for the successful prosecution of the mission have been allocated. If you request for more resources, that request is always predicated on the assumption that it will accelerate the […]
Mankind has been searching for the elixir of youth for a long, long time. Anti ageing, the quest for youthfulness, indeed, the search for eternal life, is something innate in all of us. Even those who talk about an eternal blackness, of no consciousness, actually seek an unimaginably joyous eternity but sink into blackness because […]
That’s right – Lack of Self Esteem. Which is of course directly linked to lack of self-efficacy, which is related to subscribing to the wrong set of beliefs. Beliefs like taking “Don’t work hard, work smart” to the extreme. Like “Don’t worry, you are unique – just like everyone else.” And like “The customer is […]
There has been a spate of increases in grants, as in funding, as in monetary, being given by the Singapore Government in recent years. Of course, they are meant to encourage Singapore companies to become more productive, more entrepreneurial, more organized, get more research work going, and a host of other things besides. The amounts […]
On 17 Sep 2014, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Tharman Shanmugaratnam spoke about the need to adopt “meritocracy through life” at the official opening of the Lifelong Learning Institute, which aims to raise competencies in citizens, among other things. I was flicking through the news when this caught my eye. It caused me […]
Pacers. More people use them than perhaps we think. And I’m not only referring to pacers of the cardiac sort, but anyone, thing, or system that nudges us along, maintains a viable tempo and generally keeps us on track. Pacers are regulators. They help us get to a certain optimal norm, at least for a […]
Never Fail? Do you fear failure? Do you know people who say things like “I never fail, I only learn”? Well, I respect where they’re coming from, and I also know that language controls communications and controls our thoughts. It is not only a tad hypocritical to say that we never fail, it actually causes […]
Are you someone who is constantly “Thinking out of the box?” Is your organization known for “Out of the Box” thinking and innovation? Why? Do simple re-conformations and incremental improvements represent “breakthroughs”? How often do genuine “breakthroughs” occur, anyway? While you’re pondering that, has anyone realized what the “Box” actually IS? You know what Russian […]
The concept of “There is no second chance in life” appears to be quite deeply rooted in society. It is manifested in various ways. One of them was that if you as a young student went to one of Singapore’s Institutes Of Technical Education (ITE) then you’re done for. “It’s the end!” as some people […]
I had a rather refreshing conversation with a younger person this morning. It was refreshing because he was giving off good vibes about his developing and sustaining good relationships with his clients as well as his suppliers. He was able to provide details about how he went about doing so, and how he visualized growth […]
Excellence is really an everyday thing, just like being a champion is an everyday thing. I used to say “Don’t sweat the small stuff. Sweat the small stuff.” Now, in the interests of those who don’t appreciate verbal nuance, I say “Don’t sweat the small stuff. Do the small stuff”. Of course, what the phrases […]
If we eat, work, stretch and exercise proportionately, growth takes place. If we sit on the couch, drink beer and eat potato chips whilst watching TV and playing all sorts of fun and amusing games, growth occurs as well, just that I am not sure whether you would welcome such growth. We grow muscle, become […]
We are enamoured of highly-sculpted bodies, rippling with high-definition muscle. Even couch potatoes secretly wish they could all be like that to some degree. We may not all want to have the huge muscle mass, but most, if not all of us, would certainly like a well-toned, fit and healthy look. We want to be […]
There was a Puma ad that said basically the same thing some time ago. What do I mean when I refer to “half measures”? Our society is prone to taking action, regardless of whether the action actually makes sense or otherwise. Regardless of what the reasons for the actions might be, besides the cop-out one […]
One of the buzzwords today is “empowerment.” We want our people to have greater autonomy, have more say in making decisions that affect the company and generally having higher stakes in the company’s future success. So, we get lots of advice about how to get out of the way, lead from the rear, let people […]
With apologies to Jane Austen. Consigning other people to hell as we define it, thinking less of them than we ought to, and thinking better of ourselves in the same manner, are all manifestations of pride, of prejudice, and ultimately, a sign of utter powerlessness. Contrary to popular misconception, power does not corrupt. Powerlessness corrupts. Power […]
People love fireworks. Stunning, beautiful displays of harmless power. Well, harmless if fired as intended. We also like sparks. New beginnings. Picturesque showers falling from new buildings under construction. Cute little babies, kittens, puppies, tiger cubs. We love the playfulness and wonderful, latent promises of future potential. Just a spark fires the imagination. Now, wouldn’t […]
In the previous post, I talked about Unconscious Power, which is one of the effects of having achieved Unconscious Competence in some area of endeavour or growth. Here, I discuss Conscious Authority. I once heard someone describe power and authority like this, “Football players have power. The referee has authority.” I thought it was a […]
One of the effects of Unconscious Competence is Unconscious Power. Power is the ability to do work, to get things done, to influence people to live at a higher level of consciousness. From that point, your Unconscious Power and Influence can help people into living at higher levels of unconsciousness. I once learned to operate […]
Sure. Like, how can you be prepared for things you don’t even know will happen yet? How can you be prepared for eventualities that you still have no clue about? Exactly. If you have read the original “Scouting for Boys” by Robert Baden-Powell, you would probably be able to answer that question. Since all of us […]
We hear of it all the time these days. Email, from being a handy communications channel, is now seen by many as a dreaded, insidious intruder. I’m not one of those many, as you can tell. Stop it! When are you going to grow up? Calling email a menace, labelling it as passe, is akin […]
Have you ever made any decisions that you regretted later? Of course, I have, too! Do you then fall into the rut of not making any decisions for fear that the decisions you make might also turn out for the worse? Happens to all of us, too, doesn’t it? Intuitively, we know that indecisiveness is […]
They’re possibilities. Expressions of possibilities, to be exact. When will we stop thinking about our preferences as limitations? Yes, we all have basic preferences, as we are all designed differently, and our different preferences, tastes and inclinations make up for a very interesting and diverse mix. We all have preferences when it comes to clothing, […]
Some of us prefer certain foods over other types of food. Still others eschew meats in favour of fruits and vegetables. Many today are warned against starch, and there are some for whom meat is the major portion of their daily diet. The saying that one man’s meat is another man’s poison seems to be […]
Pruning. Painful. Cutting away. So that new abundance may grow. Pruning is essential in so many spheres of life, not just in agricultural practice. One may prune branches, roots, remove excess foliage, even take away some initial fruit, in order that more fruitfulness may come to pass. Pruning must be conducted circumspectly, not too much […]
There are many analogies we could use in life. One is that of using thermals to soar above the madding morass of the unnatural state of things we call common. Another is a sense of hard work, labouring, being determined, pushing endurance to the limits, until breakthrough is achieved. There is a danger of overusing […]
Choices, choices, choices. Some we love to have, others we wish we didn’t have to make. Life is full of them. This or that. Now or later. Cake or cookies. Us or them. Innovate or optimize. Profit or value. Lead or follow. (Or get out of the way). The list goes on. In the previous […]
We live in an age of instants. Instant coffee, instant milk, instant music, instant weight loss, instant gratification. “It’s now or never!”, “Last chance to win great bargains!”, “If not now, when?” are phrases we are bombarded with constantly every day. Our culture predisposes us to act first, ask questions later. We are constantly encouraged, […]
I’ve written previously about how you ought to make your CEO redundant. Now, guess what? Yes, YOU! In fact, if you aren’t hard at work making yourself redundant if you happen to work for me, I will fire you the next chance I get! Huh? What gives? Remember what I said about two-thirds? If you […]
You know, the “In” crowd. Insecure. Insincere. Intolerant. Inhospitable. Indecent. Inhuman. Incontinent. Inebriated. Inappropriate. That’s what you will become when you seek to become “special” by joining, or by trying to join, an “exclusive” or “elite” group. I am not saying that we do not pursue excellence. That ought to be a lifelong affair! I […]
I call it the, you guessed, “Two-Thirds Rule”, and it’s measured in thumbs. With all the hoopla about burnout, work-life balance, need for white space and related others, I thought I’d share this for your benefit. Some people say life is a marathon. Some say it’s a series of sprints. I say it’s more like […]
Our old washing machine had died, and I was taking its body to the scrap metal dealer near our home. My son and I were pushing it along on our trolley. After we crossed the road to get to the scrap metal dealer, we had to negotiate a staircase downwards. Without thinking, we were about […]
Helen Keller was certainly right, and she lived by that quote. Security is something that we naturally look for, for without security the business of everyday life becomes rather difficult, if not impossible, if the environment is highly insecure. Life seems quite secure these days, if we look at the statistics about increasing life expectancy, […]
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