January 5th, 2009
One of my biggest challenges currently is balancing between school, work, fun and family. It is tough a challenge that I do enjoy. I seek to enhance my real world skills as a CEO by being able to manage the many tasks that I undergo within my life. I find this very challenging and I know it will be very rewarding for my future. It is a process right now for the long term benefit.
It is a life where I mix and match everything to optimize my time for each task I do and consistently bring quality in my actions. It is a challenge that I will always cherish as I move into developing myself personally, professionally as well as financially. It is the process that I consider priceless in meaning I would not trade it in for anything.
You’ve got to live and learn.
Categories: Ordinary
Tags: Challenge, Consistency, Learn, Live, Longevity, Multi-Tasking
January 2nd, 2009
From my understanding about the new rules of team building, Professor Richard J. Hackman of Harvard University speaks about challenging the ‘Conventional wisdom’ of team building by stating many key points. ‘Conventional wisdom’ means a belief, idea or explanation that is widely accepted by the public or persons involved in the belief, idea or explanation.
To begin, let us first jot down the key points in the ‘Conventional wisdom’ of team building.
They are the following:
- When teams work together for a certain period amount of time, their teamwork reaches a peak where they no longer improve as a team.
- Team members get too comfortable with one another that it does not push one another to exceed to greater heights.
- Team members have the tendency to quickly forgive one another of their mistakes.
- Team members no longer enforce Standard Operating Procedures and have the tendency to justify one another of their mistakes.
- By regularly adding and changing new members, this creates teams on constant alert to improve.
But then again, why build a team? Professor Richard J. Hackman speaks about that written creative expressions, and organizing ideas should be done by an individual versus that of a team, where he also mentions that committee reports should be written by an individual on behalf of a team. So why build a team and maximize them?
From my understanding and readings from outside sources, the objective of team building in the working environment is to create a collective output from each individual within the team where tasks being done mostly require different skills, experiences and judgment to establish maximum actual performance greater than that of an individual.
In meaning, building teams is important for organization success and should have a new set of rules in order for organizations to benefit from teams that make up within an organization.
Professor Richard J. Hackman challenges the above points of ‘Conventional wisdom’ of team building through the following points:
- Keeping teams small. Why?
a. Speeds up the process of decision making.
b. Rule of thumb of 6 members within a team. Example: 6 member team have 15 possible pairs, 7 members 21 pairs, 12 members 66 pairs, 24 members 552 pairs. Meaning, “The more members, the slower the team progresses.”
c. Being able to clearly define individual contribution for the impact of team performance.
d. You can’t speed up late progressive process by adding more people.
Example: You can’t make 9 different women carry a baby one for each month until the baby is born. More people means slower process.
- Teams should not consistently change members and stay together longer. Why?
a. Familiar with strengths and weakness of team members.
b. Do not have to spend time and energy to orient themselves with one another.
c. Growth in team commitment.
d. Consistently improve actual performance and minimize errors. Example: National Transportation Safety Board ran tests of fatigued pilot crews whom stayed together longer performed less errors in comparison to rested pilot crews new in acquaintance.
- Teams must have clear direction and definition. Why?
a. To understand team objective.
b. To maximize individual talents.
c. To understand elements of organizational support within team.
d. To maximize team structure (Team Design).
e. To point out the ends of achievement.
f. To explain why the pursuit of direction.
- Emphasize leadership through coaching and promote self management.
a. Hands on coaching but not dictate details to team members from the leader.
b. To plant and refresh individual motivation.
- Individual contribution and Individual motivation within the team.
a. Turning individual talents into team players.
b. Identifying clear purpose, goals and approach.
c. Avoid Social Loafing -> Social loafing is when a team member hides within the team expecting that since being in a group of individuals, a team member has the right to soften and create less effort of contribution and commitment towards the team. This happens due to the lack of motivation from a particular team member.
- Reassessing teams after 3 months. How? Why?
a. Remind direction; assess design (structure), support (leaders & organization).
b. Identify road blocks & remove elements for improvement.
c. Exploiting successes for future performance.
- Team support from leaders and organization. Why?
a. Team members should know that they are being supported by leaders as well as the organization to create freedom and confidence to perform.
Key learning points:
- Team building is not necessarily better than doing tasks individually (Depending on the task and objective).
- Social Loafing is a major factor to the erosion and ineffectiveness to team building.
- Individual motivation and skills within the team structure is vital for maximum team performance.
- Team unity and understanding is built through time.
- Individual appreciation within team members is knowing team boundaries.
- Understanding the goal, purpose and approach of each individual & team is key to maintain persistence in team building and performance.
In a closing remark, not did I only learn about team building through the readings, but I personally have reflected my own individual improvement for the sake of my own future. I am able to increase my abilities and behavior towards achieving team performance by understanding my individual contribution while staying motivated to always challenge conventional wisdom by searching for constant improvement within every idea, belief and approach. It is the leader that creates leaders that is important to building teams as improving one’s life through knowledge is what truly matters.
Categories: Ordinary
Tags: Belief, Building, Foundation, Harvard, New, Perception, Solid, Success, Team, Trust
January 1st, 2009
Its the new year and its time to reflect on the past and live for the future, right? Wrong.
It is time to live by the day and spend more quality time with the ones you love before you or them pass away. I know these words might seem too upfront, but that is the truth when it comes to things that matter in real life. We spend about 95% of our mind and efforts to get that last dollar in order for us to live. At the end of the day, or perhaps at the end of your day before you see the, “light at the end of the tunnel”, what is truly important is who surrounds you on your deathbed. It is about creating significance and becoming an “evangelist” as creating a cause is key to real world success as time spent with your loved ones are what truly matter. Friends, family and love are key for this new year resolution.
With the recent global crisis and current killings of the innocence in Gaza, it makes you think about your life more closely and truly define what is really important to you as anything can happen at any given minute.
So it is not only about reflecting the past and living for the future, but it is about living by the day and anticipating the future as the past is your education.
“Live by the day and live in the present as it is a gift of life.”
Categories: Ordinary
Tags: Importance, Love, New Years, Present Day Living, Resolution, Succes
December 31st, 2008
Throughout my years in business, I’ve come across many mistakes and downfalls in which I’ve used to create a momentum for success. I can almost speak on behalf of most entrepreneurs out there, that failing and making a mistake is always good for our future in business. We fail in order to move forward. We move forward to achieve the bottom line, at that is to profit and to create a sustainable business. I’d like to share to you some of my experiences.
One of my experiences of a common mistake while running my business is NOT establishing a solid system integrating all of the different functions together. Every function within the business must smoothly go together and move into a smooth flow that will eventually move your business at a high speed. I found out that I needed to speed up the finance aspect with book keeping in order to keep up with my marketing and vice versa; I needed to make my marketing decisions based on my finances as we must have marketing and finance go at parallel speeds for maximum results.
Another common mistake is being too greedy in business.
While seeking the best profit margins, many experience the issue of distribution. What we normally would like to see is our products being sold everywhere to create easy access for our customers to purchase our products. But the problem is, while seeking profit margins, we have the tendency to get caught up in working with too many sub-distributors, that at the end of the day, they all end up killing and minimizing our profit margins. They would compete against each other to lower the selling price then make it difficult for our customers to choose where to purchase our products. A good solution for this problem is either to search for an exclusive distributor or distribute on-line. You will have more control of the situation to monitor and evaluate your business.
Another common mistake is bad accounting.
We depend on accounting for the growth of our business because accounting and finance is considered the “health” of our business. Make sure that balance sheets are balanced, financial statements are in checked and the amount of money written in the book is also the “actual” amount of money you have at hand. This occurs a lot where the book states you have $15.000, but at hand you only have $4.000. Where did the $11.000 go?
Lastly, another common mistake is tightening your promotion money when your business is going down.
When business is slow, we should increase our spending on promotions. As without promo, your business will either stay slow or go even go down in business. We must be brave to spend our money on promotions. It is key to growing our business.
Lets fail forward and succeed.
Categories: Ordinary
Tags: Avoid, Business, Failing, Forward, Mistakes, Momentum
December 31st, 2008
Hooray!! I’ve just bought my own copy of “The 4-hour Workweek” written by Timothy Ferriss. Its been nearly 1 whole year since I’ve been reading about the book with interviews, watching videos on youtube, as well as browsed through the website of thefourhourworkweek.com to find information.
Being in Indonesia, I wanted to wait until the book hit the shelves locally so I could get my own copy at a cheaper price than if I’d directly ordered from amazon.com the day it came out in 2007. I’ve been following up on the teachings but none of it made sense to me, because the info that I’ve received through the web were just sections or parts of the book where putting it all together would not be possible without reading the entire book from the beginning to the end.
I bought the book at a local bookstore and without thinking about it I directly purchased it! There were 2 copies left as I asked the cashier if there were any more copies and he said that they only had 2 copies in the store. Woaw, close call, I almost missed out on the opportunity as great books are hard to come by down here; we must constantly browse bookstores or browse through www.juraganbuku.com
Ok, first impression of reading the beginning of the book, I directly reflected and said, “wow, this is me and my concept of life but just never knew how to interpret it until clearly manifested and stoned carved by the great Tim Ferriss.” I’ve been envisioning the new rich lifestyle all along but just never confident about my own concept and notion of life that I was always being shunned out or mistangled by the notion of ‘normal people lives’ - go to school, get a good job, get married, have kids, and teach the same process to our kids.
Luckily, it has been defined and answered and I’m going to prove the world that living the life we choose is the ideal way to live this short life. We shouldn’t be told how to live our own lives, as we were born alone and will end this life alone. We must choose to be happy with love and integrity.
Ok, back to the 4 hour week; I’m still halfway into the book as the book consists of many eye popping concepts that seem “scary (in a good way)” to me, because I truly feel the same way. I do believe this is the book thats going to change my entire life forever. And residing in the third (3rd ) world, I’m going to prove that the new rich & new lifestyle does not only exist in first (1st) world countries, but me being a third (3rd) world citizen can also live the concept of the new life being from a background of simple-low economical status.
I’m not going to talk about the book much as I plan on taking you more to my practices of the book, as I work to live out the 4-hour workweek from the perspective of a 3rd world citizen.
Well, in some parts of the book, Timothy states that being ‘unrealistic’ is the way to perceive life, and so I’m thinking, would it be possible for me to meet him and talk about my 3rd world journey of living the new rich and new lifestyle?
Does anyone have his phone number? I’d like to call him up 
Categories: Ordinary
Tags: 4 Hour Work Week, Book, Business, Concept, Efficiency, Life, Living, Mindset, Music, Paradigm, Productivity, School, Sports, Success, Timothy Ferris
December 31st, 2008
I came across a friend the other day who shared with me an interesting story in which I will bring up on today’s post. It is about genuinely helping others in order for us to receive help in return.
In today’s fast paced world, we have the tendency to focus and work on something that only benefits us and only us. We spend most of our lives living the process of helping ourselves to achieving what we plan to accomplish.
We consider jobs that only benefit us, we make sales calls that benefits us, we create business plans & strategies to benefit us, we use our links and networks to benefit us…. but have we ever thought about taking an action to purely help someone else?
Within the natural state of give and take, we tend to give because we have an interest to take.. Have you ever genuinely helped someone for the sake of helping them with no interest for your own benefits? Not many of us do..
My friend spoke about the power of reciprocal return. If we genuinely help someone full-hearted with nothing to expect in return; one day we will almost automatically receive help from others in different ways we could ever imagine.
So, lets develop our help habits and help those in need.
Categories: Ordinary
Tags: Accomplish, Genuine, Giving, Help Others, Lending a Hand, Return, Team Work, Work
December 26th, 2008
I attended a Leadership Seminar with speaker of Bob Andrews whom spoke about the 4 engines needed to lift off your team through leadership. They are the following:
1. Energy/Enthusiasm
A leader must show energy and enthusiasm for his/her team to lift off and reach greater heights. No matter the circumstances, the leader must at all times show his/her passion and excitement towards every aspect of the team. Through its ups and downs, the leader must always be energetic. This automatically transends the energy into the team.
2. Education
A leader must educate his/herself in all aspects of the team. Through all the tangibles and intagibles, the leader must have solutions to problems and always motivate the team to greater heights after all of its accomplishments.
3. Expectation
A leader must always believe and have a positive attitude towards every aspect of the team. Through its personnel, outcomes, strategies and decisions; the leader must always expect to come out as a winner. One doubt from the leader; and the team will automatically follow doubt. Remember–> “You can’t manage doubt!”
4. Encouragement
A leader must always motivate and encourage his/her team to always strive for the best and to never be easily satisfied. The team can be rewarded after all of their accomplishments but always push them to be better than they are. Encourage success. Always remember, “we are on a journey and not a destination”.
Categories: Ordinary
Tags: Drive, Education, Encouragement, Energy, Enthusiasm, Expectation, Leadership, Team
