Employee Volunteerism in Corporate Organizations

April 6th, 2012 No Comments

Before I get into the topic, can we all try recalling the days when we were in school, college or universities?  We had loads of studies and assignments to do, not forgetting the nightmares of examinations and long hours of cramming to get through them.  However, despite all that we spent time participating in some form of extra-curricular activities and enjoy our time with friends organizing projects beyond studies.

What that pictures in mind, ask ourselves – what did we enjoyed doing better?  Studying or the extra-curricular activities?  Which one did we deliver better results?  I guess most of us would be more motivated with the extra-curricular rather than the studies.  why?  Because this one is a “need to” which we felt oblidged because affects grades and the other is a “want to” which doesn’t.  Do we all see something that corporate organizations could learn from colleges and universities?

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Opportunity, then Readiness – A process that can’t be Inverted

April 2nd, 2012 1 Comment

“There’s still a gap”, “He’s not ready yet”, “He does not have an exposure with senior roles” … These are some very common statements made by the management everytime when succession planning discussion takes place.  In my years of experience working on Talent Management and Succession Planning for organizations, I’ve seen many instances where succession planning become nothing more than a paper filling exercise for corporate records.  There are even times when a manager mentioned that his high potential “should be ready” for a larger role within a year “with just minimal gap”, but repeats the same phrase the following year.

What’s the main issue here?  One manager I’ve spoke to made a statement that’s right on the spot – “Nobody is going to be 100% ready until he/she takes up the role, we just need to take a chance and promote the person who’s 75% ready.  The other 25% comes from the opportunity that comes hands-on with the job”.  Doesn’t that sound perfectly right?

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Billionnaire University Drop-Outs aren’t Academic Failures

January 30th, 2012 No Comments

Tech Millionaires under 30 (GE Consult)

When I was growing up, Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple) & Michael Dell (Dell Computers) used to be talk of the town (oops … I mean the world) where every other youth were amazed about their success stories and aspired to be just like one of them.  Today, we have Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) & Blake Ross (FireFox) where the wanna-bes look-ups to.  What is the one thing all of them have in common?  They’ve all dropped out from University!

Very often, due to these common facts about the “celebrity entrepreneurs”, many begun to downplay the importance of University Education.  People start to think that academic failures may make better innovators / entrepreneurs / role models.  There are some areas where most of us have forgotten about these people since it’s rarely highlighted when talked about their success stories.

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Key Trends in Learning & Development (Present & Future)

January 18th, 2012 No Comments

This post is probably way overdue.  Someone asked me end of last year what are the trends I see in Learning and Development as we go into year 2012 and beyond.  It’s indeed a tough question to answer since I do not own a crystal ball to tell the future, but I believe these were the directions.

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HR Analytics falling into the trap of “Neo-Scientific Management”?

December 9th, 2011 1 Comment

I’m sure many of us who are familiar with the evolution of management concepts knows that Scientific Management is all about.  First introduced by Frederick Taylor in 1980s and remain popular till 1920s, it’s considered something obsolete in modern management.

If asked about their view on Scientific Management today, most managers will claim that it’s something of the past and doesn’t work anymore.  However, it’s interesting to see the next wave of Scientific Management actually coming into the picture in the name of Management / HR Analytics!

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Focus on People & Objectives, not Technologies

November 3rd, 2011 No Comments

Being involved in quite a number of transformation projects involving technologies enhancements (and not forgetting my Computer Science roots), I often observed great technology implementation with flaws when it comes to execution and change management.  This is often due to the organization and technology specialist’s urge to showcase the best in class and state-of-the-art technologies.

What many fail to realize is the fact that technologies are only valuable if it reduces the workload of your team, usable, cost effective and most importantly bring the organization forward.  In fact, a technology transformation is a good time for us to relook at our processes and gauge if it’s most optimum use of resources.

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Back to Basics Personal Financial Management

November 2nd, 2011 No Comments

The awareness on financial planning has definitely been increasing with the numerous organizations offering financial planning certifications such as CFP or RFP.  Not forgetting the loads of financial advisors and wealth planners around.  The challenge about getting good advise from these “professionals” are that they often have vested interested (I.e: they’re trying to sell their products such as insurance or unit trusts and often get a commission on them).

It’s also often difficult or everyone on the street to understand where are they essentially placing their money and what are the risk involves.  I’m no financial pro but I’ll try to explain my view of financial planning (as well as retirement planning) using the simpliest examples.

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Gold and Silver prices – Bubble waiting to Burst?

October 26th, 2011 5 Comments

In recent years, I’ve had many “investment advisors wannabe” making recommendations that I should put my money into gold and silver, calling it a safe haven and citing how much the prices of gold and silver has increased over the years.  While there are undoubtedly some truth in the boom of gold and silver in recent years, I’m somehow not convinced (and I guess never going to be convinced in the near future) that these are safe investments.

I’m going to share some of my views here and hope to get more feedback (especially if there are any points I’ve missed in my analysis of the situation).

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How do you Manage Poor Performers?

October 13th, 2011 No Comments

While most of your employees are performing up to your expectation, or at least doing their best to get there, you seem to find one or two who does not put in as much effort and consistently performing below your expectations.  What do you do with them?

Very often, I see managers who choose to tolerate poor performers and “load balance” by providing more responsibilities to the high performers.  While these may give the high performer a good stretch and realize more potential, there are indeed many risks to it.  In this article, I shall run through some possible reasons managers chose to ignore the issue and what are the risks involved.

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Steve Jobs – The Long Lasting Impact & Inspiration

October 7th, 2011 No Comments

October 5, 2011 – Yet another great inspiration to mankind succumbs to Pancreatic Cancer after Randy Pausch (July 25, 2008).  Both with similiar character, highly innovative and lived life to the fullest.  While Randy Pausch “Last Lecture” was an inspiration, Steve Jobs too had one of the most inspiring speech to the young generation.  Watch this and be inspired!

 

I’ve also compiled a list of articles on Steve Jobs for those who wants to know about the legend.  Read on to find out more …

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