Here are the definition from Wikipedia:

• Midlife crisis is a term coined in 1965 by Elliott Jaques and used in Western societies to describe a period of dramatic self-doubt that is felt by some individuals in the “middle years” or middle age of life, as a result of sensing the passing of their own youth and the imminence of their old age. Sometimes, a crisis can be triggered by transitions experienced in these years, such as extramarital affairs, andropause or menopause, the death of parents or other causes of grief, unemployment or underemployment, realizing that a job or career is hated but not knowing how else to earn an equivalent living, or children leaving home. The result may be a desire to make significant changes in core aspects of day-to-day life or situation, such as in career, work-life balance, marriage, romantic relationships, big-ticket expenditures, or physical appearance.
• Quarterlife crisis is a term applied to the period of life immediately following the major changes of adolescence, usually ranging from the early twenties to the early thirties. The term is named by analogy with mid-life crisis.

In other words, there’s really no difference between the 2.  The key measure and cause to emotions stirring here is lifestyle, career, work-life, relationships, networth and appearance.  To cut it short, it’s how a person measure his or her own self achievements against expectations.  If those definitions are true, then there’s a silver lining here - anyone will only go through midlife crisis or quarterlife crisis, not both.  The “crisis will hit” once, and depending on when it happens you’ll just label it accordingly!

So why does these happen?  Why did Midlife Crisis transformed into Quarterlife Crisis?

• Reality hits earlier - Due to “Formal Education” and “Knowledge Economy”, there’s higher expectations among graduates to achieve sooner rather than later.  I’m not sure if it’s just my observation or would anyone be able to provide some data for this, but my view would be that graduates generally have a higher chance of getting into quarterlife crisis while those who does not obtain tiertary education is more likely to only face mid-life crisis.  This has to do with the circle of friends from the same university adding on to peer pressure.  To put it simply, parents nowadays convince the children to study hard by saying “you got to get good grades to become a high achiever some day”, so the higher the grades the faster quarterlife crisis arrive when reality hits.
• News travels faster - How often do you get to meet up with your schoolmates in the past (i.e: 1950s)?  I guess not that often especially if you’re not brought up in the same city throughout your life.  So it’s likely only during annual reunion (which not everybody attends).  You’re unlikely to know much about your friend’s progress and how well they have done until years later (late thirties), that’s when comparison starts and those who felt they have underachieved goes into midlife crisis.  Today, university mates meets up in starbucks (or anywhere else for that matter) so frequently that they could exchange notes about who’s doing what.  Furthermore, so much news about your friend’s life could be found on social network.  It’s likely that you’ll get the news within 1 month if your friend got promoted, updated the status and posted some pictures of celebrations.  Thus, comparisons started earlier (late 20s).
• More stories to compare against - There are more successful young entrepreneurs around and many stories published about these people.  Many people forgot about the millions who fail for the one to succeeded.  While “success stories” in the past are about those who made it in their 40s, the stories today focused much on those who achieved in the 20s.  Once again, comparison and society expectations.
• Widening gap in wealth - While the gap between the rich and poor is the society may not be that huge in the past, it is not too obvious.  However, as the generation grows, it’s just common economics that the rich becomes richer for the money they get to reinvest and grow while the poor becomes poorer (taking into consideration time value of money).  When these happens, those who came from more comfortable well to do families may have family backing for better education or even capital to start their own business while those who are not as lucky may just need to first work the hard way up as employees.  Thus the gap creates comparison too!  Yes, I agree that there are the rich to bankrupts and poor to strike it rich but these are small numbers.
• Career is a big word - “Education” is the past focuses on “becoming a useful person”.  Before formal education exists, the informal education are often religious in nature and it’s all about becoming a better person.  However, today’s education focuses on “building your career”.  Universities nowadays even include modules on career development as part of its curriculum.  Because of the big word “career”, graduates tend to be harder on themselves and can’t wait to see their results.
• Wedding becoming more complex - Getting married in the past used to be a simple ceremony (some even have arranged marriage) where there’s more for parents to worry about than for the one getting married.  Times have changed, there are now expectations on purchasing a house, stable income, diamond ring … etc (and the list goes on) when the thought of wedding comes to mind.  Thus, people are “not ready to get married” until a later date.
• More inventions and gadgets - When there’s more supply, the demand will somehow follow.  This is especially true for lifestyle and “status” items.  Thus with the frequent introduction of new innovation and gadgets today, the cost of living (or should I say the cost of lifestyle) increases too!  With that, many perceive that they’re unable to live the lifestyle they desire to and feel depressed about it.

Looking at the above, whether mid-life or quarterlife crisis; it looks very much like a state of mind.  It’s about our desires and expectations compared to our actual ability to meet them.  What’s more important is to be able to adjust our own expectations and desires if it does not look realistic from the ability viewpoint and accept that fact that the world isn’t created equal.

A sense of satisfaction and feeling contented will conquer the quarterlife crisis, don’t you think so?  Easier said than done though.

While I’ve not got hold of any statistics (which alerted me that this could be a good thesis topic), I am of the view that there are often issues in the execution of succession planning if it does not get the buy-in from the board of directors and senior leadership team.  Let’s take a look at the top 5 roadblocks (no particular order) and how can we remove them.

1. Defensive / territorial incumbent - this is often caused by incumbent who are lacking in confidence and would do whatever it takes to defend its position.  Therefore, they may often identify “successors” who will never be ready or do little to develop his successor.  To circumvent this, talents identified should not be done solely based on head of department’s recommendation but rather the leadership team.  In addition, the identified successor should be placed under the mentorship of a leader of different function.  Afterall, the higher it goes in the corporate hierarchy, the lesser the functional expertise matter.
2. Vacancy not in sight - Many good employees leave an organization after being groomed as a successor because they’re ready but simply do not believe that a vacancy will be created in the near future.  I’ve blogged about this before (that this is among the lowest of my concern if I have the 2nd successor in place) but it still remains one that is much talked about.  The key to removing this barrier is to ensure that the vacancy is “created” within 2 years of readiness.  How is this done?  Create a pool of “utility talents” works on cross functional projects rather than heading a department.  This is with the intention of rotating from department head’s role and project-based role to ensure continuous innovation and getting a breath of skills.  With that in place, compare the “ready candidate” to be “incumbent” and the one who is in a better position to head the department does it while the other moves into “utility talents” pool who will also develop in other areas.
3. Never ending renewal of contact - When item 1 & 2 above combined, this is what you get.  Incumbent who does not want to develop the next in line and therefore there will never be successor while the contract of incumbent gets renewed way beyond retirement.  Successor will then see no vacancy is sight and lose motivation to continue.  Management will need to recognize that no person will be 100% ready for any roles until they are in there.  Therefore, a maximum contract period policy shall be in place to stop this.  Any employees on contract should only be position as advisor and department head role to be handed over to the successor instead.
4. Succession planning seen as “paper-filling” - Many managers do not take succession planning seriously.  That’s especially true when they do not plan to be long with an organization or is contented to remain in the position for long to come.  The mindset that “if I’m dead tomorrow who cares about the organization” is prevalent since there’s no gain from giving it more focus.  I’ve seen organization doing succession planning where a successor is “1 year from readiness” for 2 years even after the incumbent position became vacant.  There were no serious thought given into it and no development beyond filling the form.  To prevent this, organization has to have a policy in place where no external hires are allowed if there’s any successor who are within 2 years of readiness.  This will not only force the successor into a steep learning curve but also ensure that managers are conditioned with the right mindset in giving succession planning a more serious thought beyond form filling.
5. Matrix reporting - When there’s a matrix reporting where the incumbent reports to several managers with different business objectives, there may be different successors identified for the position too depending on their individual strength as desired by different managers.  It will need to be made clear who has the final say in this as well as ensuring point number 1 where a senior leadership committee is used to identify talents rather than solely depending on managers.

I’m not too sure if there are anymore.  I’m sure working on a cost-benefit analysis of succession planning initiatives has many other variables but it’s sure to be an interesting topic of reseach.  Any thoughts?

It has often become a norm is many organizations to use the method of “counter offer” to retain its employee.  While it may work for short term, it’s often a method that I’d highly discourage.  Some employees goes a step further by first leaving the organization and joining back several years later with a significant salary increase.  This is often referred to as the revolving door.  When this becomes too evident, employees will start to make use of such tactics to get pay increments and soon it become a culture in the organization.  So why not take care of those you have around instead of going out to hunt for those who have left?

The same applies to the brain drain issue that’s affecting Malaysia or most developing country at the moment.  In order to increase the number of talented individuals in the country, there are 2 ways - increase inflow or reduce outflow.  Outflow reduction is often hard to measure because often the talents were still “unpolished gems” when they leave for another country.  Increase inflow of talents is easily measured because it’s “polished diamonds” that you’re importing.  Therefore, often people will choose the more visible path especially when visibility becomes important when election is around the corner.

Let me list out the issues that may occur out of this “wooing back with incentives” methods:

• People tend to leave with the intention to come back later to get the “incentives” which may not be bad but we would be always be short of “young and rising” talents.
• When it becomes too visible that those that went through the revolving door gets more benefits, it indirectly encourage talent outflow that goes unnoticed (we may still not achieve a net increase in talent inflow if this happens).
• Government incentives for foreign talents become the next largest subsidy in the future.  We all know what issues we could face if people becomes “addicted to subsidies”.
• We’re still likely to woo back those who finds it hard to make it in another country and decides to return (and still get incentives).
• We may just become “retirement ground” for many professionals.  We just heard of ageing population issue recently, this might just add on to it.

Therefore, my suggestion would be:

• Pump the incentives into the industry with shortage of talents rather than to the individuals.  For incentives to be given to “all critical positions” irregardless of whether it’s eventually taken up by someone residing overseas or locally.  That will not only bring back those who have left but retain those who are still around.
• There should not be any preferential treatment for those who have left, otherwise it becomes a punishment to those who are loyal.
• Increase the education bond amount placed on government scholarship holders who were sent to study overseas.  Bear in mind the bond we place on our scholarship holders are often nothing after currency conversion if a company in UK wants to buy it out.  The bond amount should take into account effort in identifying the student and time value of money.

Finally, in order to gain the respect of those who are away, it’s first important for us to respect those who have stayed.  Continue shouting “we’ve got no talents” will put us in the rut forever.

• What do you think about using Social Network to Recruit?
• Is it a norm for HR to check on employees behaviour via Social Network?
• Is it ethical for HR to be spying on employees (or potential employees) using Social Network?

Before I give my answers to these questions, let me be clear that they are all my personal opinion and does not represent the view of my organization.  By the way, my organization blocks all Social Networking sites from the office - So I guess the answer on their view is quite straight-forward.

What Do I think about using Social Network to Recruit?

I seriously think that it’s a fantastic thing to do and that social network has lots of potential in them.  For those who do not agree, here’s my challenge - “Is it wrong to recruit a good potential you found while attending some networking events?”.  Let me just say that both are the same, just different platform.  If you think your organization doesn’t, think again; the headhunter services that you do might be using social networking to recruit too!

Recruiting on Social Networking can further be broken down to several ways:

• One to one targetting (this is mostly done in Linked-in where you can find the profile of potentials).
• Mass advertising on your own profile which may attract some attention.
• Targetted advertising (Facebook has this feature that you could advertise just to a targetted group).  They stop short of selling your information.
• Join group discussions and you may find some very good strategic thinker in there (which is just like meeting someone in networking events)!

Is it a norm for HR to check on employees behaviour via Social Network?

No, I don’t think it’s a norm; or at least not yet in Malaysia.  But if the question was whether I think is a good platform to check on employees behaviour?  I think the answer would be “Yes”!  However, what’s more important here is the intention of checking.  HR should not be playing the role of “policeman” trying to catch “bad employees”.  Rather, I’ve always encourage organizations to get on social networking (Ie: to start a facebook/linkedin site for employees) for the purpose of gathering employees sentiments.

Organizations spend hundreds of thousands organizing employee engagement surveys, communication townhalls with Q&A session with the intention of understanding employees.  Asian being asian, the “other comments” in the engagement survey are often left empty because we just do not like writing as much.  In addition, the non-confrontational style of Asian employees means nothing controversial is likely to be asked using townhall session.  So would we really know the true sentiments of employees here?  I don’t think so.  On facebook however, employees may be enjoying themselves and sometimes venting their frustration which may even be screaming about how horrible the organization is.  That gives the organization an opportunity to sense the truth and look into what else could be done for the employees.  The subconcious venting of frustrations about the organization could be used as valued feedback for companies to continously improve.  So why not leverage on something that’s free?

Is it ethical for HR to be spying on employees (or potential employees) using Social Network?

Spying on employees - If there really some serious IR issues or legal matters to be resolved, it could be used as one of the last resort alternatives.  Otherwise, I feel any “spying” effort will only create lost in trust amongst employees.  So the answer would be NO.

Spying on potential employees - The straight-forward answer will still be NO.  However, it’s “officially NO”, not “strict NO”.  It’s all up to the hiring manager and not HR.  The hiring manager should feel free to search the person up on the Internet if he/she wants to.  Afterall, didn’t most organizations preach about “becoming friends with your employees”?  Before you meet-up with a friend on a blind-date, wouldn’t you be curious enough to search that person up the Internet?  That being said, hiring managers should be objective enough to understand that anything happening in private life that does not affect work should not affect hiring decisions.  It could however be able to tell sometimes whether a candidate is lying or exagerating during an interview.

My final word of advise - Manage your image on cyberspace the same way you manage it in real-life and you’ll be fine.

What was more obvious in this World-Cup?  The German Keeper missed the ball, turned back and saw it bouncing beyond the line, grabbed it and quickly throw it back out.  An Argentine striker received the ball knowing he’s way offside, continued to score the goal and immediately celebrated!  This is the most watched game on earth and the players were supposed to be role model to our future generations, what happened?

Before I continue, I’d like to show a videos of fantastic sportsmanship.

* Paolo DiCanio catches the ball instead of heading it in when the keeper was down injured.

* Football player who refuses penalty which was wrongly awarded.

I remember seeing another video on Roger Federer signalling to the umpire on the wrong decision made in favour of himself, and he went on to lose the game with his head held high!  Couldn’t find the video on youtube but it’s one of the videos in Stephen M.R. Covey’s “Speed of Trust”.

Those were what I really mean by good sportsmanship.  It’s not all about winning, it’s about winning it the right way!

So why did football ended up this way?  I believe it’s a matter of rules, enforcement and expectations that creates that culture.  If anyone watches Lawn Bowl, you would quickly realize that there isn’t exactly a referee or umpire required for Lawn Bowl.  Not because there’s no subjective calls to be made, but it’s just the way the game is played - based on unanimous agreement and honesty!  Since cheating wasn’t part of the game, there wasn’t a motivation to cheat.

In football or most team-based sports however, the motivation to cheat is present.  Why?  Because “not getting caught” becomes a challenge that trills the players.  When there’s enforcement officer present, the subconscious mind is telling us that “what the enforcement officer says is law” which also means “if the enforcement officer is quite about it, it’s not wrong”.  Therefore, self-regulated environment often creates better sportsmanship that enforcer regulated ones.

Next would be the expectation.  There are more expectations to win than to play fair.  The society, the fans, the leaders are all rewarding winners but not fair players.  Imagine if a player decline a penalty which was wrongly given to him and result in his team losing, what would the coach say to him?  What would his teammates say?  How will the fans react?  Similiarly, if a player cheated and won the game, he will only be remembered for winning the game but not condemned for the cheat.  Isn’t that true for Maradona’s Hand of God?  The Hand of God became a celebrated pride instead of something to be condemned.  So if that’s how we’re rewarding our sportsmen, we can’t complain about the new breed of “sportsmanship”.

Finally, there were no controls to “right the wrong”.  In the real world, if someone commits a crime, even when a police fail to catch him/her at the crimescene, he/she will still be charged if there are sufficient evidence.  In football however, unsportsmanlike behaviour often goes unpunished even when there’s video evidence and the whole world sees it.  Yes, some may argue that players who throw punches when referee doesn’t see it may still get disciplinary panel suspending them later, but I’m talking about the “minor offences” such as claiming to not have touched the ball although he clearly did, using the hand to knock the ball into the net, or keepers that throws the ball out after seeing that it has clearly passed the line.

If those below were enforced, do you think the whole gameplay will be different?

• Keepers who cleared after it has passed the line may be suspended for 3 games and lose the game by default if video evidence shows it after the game.
• Players who claim innocence after knocking the ball out to be suspended for a game.
• Players who uses abusive languages get automatic red card.
• Players who argued with referees decision suspended from the tournament if found guilty according to video evidence.

If FIFA doesn’t want to use video evidence during gameplay for reasons such as “tradition”, speed, momentum, game-time and many others raised earlier; using video evidence to punish more severely after the game has ended may be the right move to cultivate a more positive behaviour.  And in long run, to turn football into a players self-regulated game instead.

• UPSR (Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah)
• PMR (Penilaian Menengah Rendah)
• SPM (Sijil Peperiksaan Malaysia)

A couple of months ago, our Education Minister started exploring the possibilities of doing away with the UPSR and PMR, leaving SPM as the only examination.  Since then, there were many arguements between “to test or not to test”.  One of the more significant statements were “we could always do with other ways of assessments instead”.

Let’s do a surface analysis on the 3 examinations above.  The first 2 were indeed already “assessments” instead of “examination” just by the name it’s called. “Penilaian” means “Assessment” whereas “Peperiksaan” means “Examination”.  If anyone could recall PMR was introduced to replace SRP (Sijil Rendah Pelajaran).  Way back decades ago, the idea of changing the “certification” (Sijil) into an “assessment” (Penilaian) has already taken place.  However, if there are no means of execution; if the mindset doesn’t change; if the people remain with the same skills - there will not be any fundamental change to the mechanisms and results besides the change in name.

Next, let’s take a look at SPM.  SPM used to have “practical examination” for Science Papers which was later replaced with “Project Paper” and the same “Project Paper” format has been introduced to other subjects like History.  I can’t tell much about Geography, Economics … etc since I was a Science student (althoughy I believe project paper was introduced too).  This shows that the Education Department were indeed trying to move towards more practical ongoing assessment for a long time.

So why is Malaysia unable to remove examinations and replace it with on-going assessments instead?  There are few reasons that I could think of:

• The system is too huge to be changed.  There’s an inertia going on.  Any small change created will affect the long established system in the whole country.  To begin with, students will start to fare badly in the ongoing practical assessments because we’ve been through decades of memorizing.  Some who have became parents today were from the generation where education is about memorizing everything in the books, and it’s now going to be a challenge to guide the kids otherwise.
• I guess there’s an economic factor involved here.  If Examinations are scrapped, many tuition centres will be closed, teachers will not have an avenue to earn “part-time income” (which are often much more than their full-time income.  Would teaching will be attractive?  Would the government be able to compensate teachers enought to keep them interested to remain in the profession?  It’s a large economic sector to take care of.
• Finally, and the most important one.  Do we have sufficient “good teachers”?  The importance of any form of assesment is the ability to measure accross the whole nation for consistency.  That’s something only examinations can do for now.  We do not have teachers of the same quality accross the nation.  There are large gaps even within the same school.  (If you walk into some schools you might overhear students that says “I hope that teacher-A can teach my class because I don’t understand a thing teacher-B says”).
• Unlike accross the border down south where teaching is seen as an important profession (that gets compensated well too), I once had someone joking to me that teaching is a profession of last resort in Malaysia.  A teacher that got minimum credit for a subject may eventually be teaching someone who’s aspiring to get straight-As.  How are we going to expect the teacher to be able to assess the student when a young and bright student begins thinking out of the box beyond what the teacher could imagine?  Thus, exams within “marking script” becomes the best way to create standardize quality accross the country.  And it obviously doesn’t pay to be too creative in answering the questions.  Just memorize!

So my take on scrapping examinations? Yes, but with several conditions:

• Ensure that all teachers are of top quality.
• Or at least have a subject matter expert on every subject in every school that could guide on standardizing the assesments.

Both the above will mean more investment into education personnels (and better compensation for teachers!) … And it’s in-line with Malaysia becoming a High-Income Society!

I thought it was really spot on and meaningful to share it with everyone else.  So here it is:

FIFA World Cup 2010 Logo

While world cup is around the corner, much have been talked about the final 23 selected by each country, the havoc created by injuries and team coach’s changes of plans and strategy leading towards the world cup.  I was looking at the news and the players selected for World Cup this year as compared to last year, there are in fact quite a number of learning points for corporate business world, human resources and succession planning.

Here are just 6 areas that I’ve observed that gave it a thought, maybe you can add more.

Structure of the team:

In a typical football team with sufficient depth (or even those without) there are likely to be five levels (categories) of players - Academy / Youth / Reserve / First Team / First Eleven.  This is very much a career path of every football player and all professional players would have their dreams of getting into the first eleven some day.  But what’s unique in the footballing world that’s could be replicated into the corporate world is the sense of purpose, goal and recognition at each of this level. 

While not as great as the World Cup, there’s the Youth World Cups and the Reserve Games where the teams challenge other teams of the same level.  Similiarly in the corporate world, every employee at every level ought to have some goals that they could strive to in order to be motivated.  More often than not, quantifiable goals are given to the senior management but very rarely cascaded to the more junior employees, causing an expectation mismatch and lack of motivation.

Imagine if we were to tell the youth players that their job is to just run around the field and passing the ball everyday until they have sufficient capabilities to become a First Team player, how long would he/she last in football?  So managers, to develop your people, give them subsets of your job too! And hold them accountable for results.

Discipline vs. Results:

Discipline is always to be put ahead of results.  Theo Walcott was surprisingly left out of the England squad for not heeding the instructions of manager Fabio Capello.  He’s a superstar and that’s ought to affect England’s performance.  But what would happen if Capello kept him?  Other players would look up to him as role model and the team will be out of hand.  It’s tough to take disciplinary action with your top performers (maybe your top sales person), but allowing one to continue will destroy morale of the team, make that tough decision and cut losses.

Role of the Veterans:

Have you come accross organizations that will renew the contract of retired employees over and over again way beyond their retirement age for the key reason that they could not find someone ready to take on the role.  When this happens, it’s often the organization that not ready to pur forth a slightly inexperienced person.

Football does it perfectly well.  In this world cup, we witness Thiery Henry being known as the (super-sub) and David Beckham joining the team as an assistant to Manager Capello.  Henry was a former great and I believe his ability is sufficient to keep him as current great too!  Some may say Beckham isn’t playing because he’s injured, but I bet even if he plays he’s unlikely to be first choice.  He has a role larger than just playing, they’re there to guide the next generation, become the inspiration and become a ready stand-in for emergencies.  Same for other teams, older players who were once a star are kept in the team as role model but only bit part player.

Let’s look beyond world cup into professional football, some older professional footballers are given rolling contract year-on-year.  Do clubs depend on these players on rolling contract to be in their first-evelen?  Likely not, they’re to take a backseat and let the next generation flourish, but ready to come in whenever needed.

Apply it to business world, we’re ought to have retired employees on contract to take a back seat and play mentor role to a new Head of Division/Department instead of keeping them as Head of Division for as long as the contract last.  Nobody will ever be 100% ready until they’ve been put on the seat, so it’s important to have veterans make way especially if we want succession to happen.

I’d acknowledge the fact that the veterans in football take a backseat because they would physically slow down when they go into their 30s, doesn’t that feel the same for veterans in corporate world and technology (not all, but quite a majority)?

World Cup vs. Professional Football (i.e: Premier League)

Compare managing a world cup and managing a professional football team - which one would you prefer?  World Cup gets you more glamour (it happens only once in 4 years) but professional football manager gives you more flexibility (you can add players from any nation as long as you have the funds, no nationality issues).  Obviously World Cup success is tougher than Champions League success due to nationality constraints.

In corporate world, it’s also obvious that it’s easier to buy talents than to develop internally especially when you’re looking for quick-wins, but they’re not exactly that sustainable and cost much more.  So the key here is to work like a National Football Team Manager and build your team.

Remember also that National Team Managers don’t get a hand in grooming every younger since the early stage of their footballing careers, these footballers are most likely groomed by clubs.  So it’s very important for National Team to cooperate with the clubs to identify talents and groom the players accordingly.  Relationships with clubs are also important to ensure that players remain fit for important national teams (often an unwritten gentlemen agreement).

What does this translate to the business world?  Build your relationships with your talent source! - Universities!  Colleges!  Institutes!  Professional Bodies!  They’re the one who mould you next big star.  So rather than continuously complaining about bad quality graduates, work with the universities to align expectations and develop good ones!  Most corporate organizations build relationships with more headhunters than universities, that’s then no wonder HR cost kept increasing.  Headhunters are the Scouts for football players, they’re the model used by rich proffesional clubs and not national team ona budget.

Team Dynamics vs. Individualism:

Sometimes we see small countries create upsets by lifting the cup (maybe we’ve not seen that in the world cup finals but definitely in semi finals as well as Euro Cups).  How did this happen?  Because smaller countries tend to have more players who are not all over the world and therefore they have a longer practice time together with the national team.  They’re built into the core of the team with similiar culture, norms and understanding.

So in corporate talent build vs. buy strategy, think about this.  Short term “victory” could be bought, but long term team dynamics is better built internally.  Buying big superstars may not produce the same results when they’re with a different organization.

Relationships with Customers:

Each team maintains very good relationship with their Fan Club.  The fan club is actually the Customers!  They buy the merchandise, ticket to the stadium and cheer the team.  It’s the energy from the fans that brings evergy.  Customer/Supplier relationship is very much inter-dependent, so treat your customers well because they will in turn cheer you on and give you more energy to go further.  We should all have our “loyal customers” in our mind.  If you haven’t, start building your supporter base (by providing exceptional services that meet their needs)!

Alright, enough of Business Talk, now let’s get to leisure and play some fantasy football –> http://www.deloitte.com/my/fantasyfootball (Let me know if you’ve created a league and I’ll join you too!)

First Mavi Marmara was captured by the Israel Navy, and all the big news surrounding it.  While the rest of the world started condemning the action (of which I condemn too), what was more amazing is the fact that the “activist” decided that Rachel Corrie Aid ship should continue in that mission too despite Israel having openly announced that they will stop all aid ship that approch Gaza.And in justifying the need to continue the journey, some activist claims that “We’re fulfilling our obligations and the wishes of the donors to ensure that Aid reaches the Gaza victims”.  So I guess that’s the original mission - To ensure that all aid reaches the victims in Gaza.

The next question is - Have the mission been accomplished?  The report didn’t quite tell, but I’m guessing the answer is NO!  The ships are captured once again and then the “activist” are celebrated like “heroes” when mission isn’t accomplished.  And then it is followed by a prominent politician telling us that “Gaza aid ship incident a moral victory for M’sia“.  What moral victory are we talking about?  The victory of losing the aid and probably strenghtening the Israel Navy?

That’s the difference between effectiveness and efficiency, and also shows what happens when we lose sight of our end-in-mind.  If we’re not strong enough to persevere and to keep reminding ourselves about the end-in-mind, we’re more likely to crumble during tough times and go for the “wrong victory”.  Just like in any business or personal relationships, if we’re not ready to take time to be effective, we’re more likely to just fight back and declare war in any minor misunderstanding - where we should in fact be looking at each issue with an objective mind.

Moving ahead bringing Rachel Corrie to Gaza is nothing more than trying to complete the mission efficiently,losing sight of goal and winning the wrong victory, going through the quickest path so that “mission accomplished” could be announced.

Our former prime minister (despite sometimes making quite controversial remarks) have this time made a very wise statement - “A new assessment on the effectiveness of shipping humanitarian relief aid to Gaza has to be made to ensure the aid reaches the people of Gaza“.  That’s indeed true!  Why not keep the aid, return to shore somewhere else, and start thinking about a new way to reach the people of Gaza?

So before we celebrate these activist as heroes, let’s take some time and think about whether they’ve accomplished the mission (besides showing the fact that they dare to take challenges and face danger for the sake of it).  And before we start donating again “for a meaningful cause”, take some time to think about how much of your donation will reach the intended receipient.

And for us in life, in the midst of all the challenges we face, ask ourselves “are we still keeping sight of our end-in-mind?”

Lessons from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to be applied here?

• Begin with the End-In-Mind (Habit 2)
• Production vs. Production Capability
• Effectiveness vs. Efficiency

Deadlock at the far end

Last Saturday (8 May 2010) I took a wrong turn after my medical checkup in Subang Jaya and that led me into a highway.  I was in such a hurry and found that the only way for me to get back on time is to make a U-turn using the flyover and return to where I started.  How glad I was when I found that U-turn, then disaster strikes - The traffic lights were spoilt and there I am stuck in a massive jam.  What’s worst about this is that there were faulty traffic lights are 2 consecutive turning that makes the u turn, and it caused a deadlock between the both ends (none of the cars could move at all!)

I was there stuck in the car, hoping for the traffic police to come soonest possible, looking around to see if there’s a number I could call to report the faulty traffic lights - none.  All the cars around were getting restless, frustrated and I could see many “I give up” faces of frustration in the cars around me, and my heart was beating fast as well in being late for my appointment.  At this point is when I witness what it means to “be the solution”.

In the midst of all the car honking, some luxury cars around, some car even chauffeur driven, and many cars like mine (just another ordinary passanger vehicle), none of us did anything except for the passenger of the “Sisters Crispy Popiah” (thought I should give them some publicity for being so thoughtful) delivery van that finally decided to get out of his van and started directing the traffic.  After a while, a lorry driver followed suit and then followed by another car (not too sure what business was it but definitely commercial since it’s with advertisements all over).  Since there are few junctions of traffic lights that creates deadlock, they each took a junction and started directing traffic there very selflessly until the traffic police finally came.

The traffic jam right in front of me. The van at the left corner belongs to Sisters Popiah.

Thanks to all of them, I made it back in time.  That got me thinking - would I have done the same if I wasn’t driving the car alone?  Would I have gotten out to direct the traffic?  I might have not done it in the past (and I’m sure many wouldn’t either) but that particular experience do motivate me to do it in the future if such scenario arises.

It then got me thinking - why did the 3 of them (especially one from Sisters Crispy Popiah that first came out of the van) do it so willingly without being told?  That’s precisely “being the solution” and “focused on objective” is all about.  They had the initiative to do whatever it takes to get things done.  This is something that may not be thought in school or universities (I’m sure those that stood up and assist traffic were not the most academically educated or richest people around).  There were just very focused on their goals - to deliver on time.  And rather than sitting back, the stood up and made the difference themselves.

In 7 Habits, we call it “focusing on your area of influence instead of concerns”.  They can’t control what the others do or repair the traffic lights, but what they could definitely do is to direct the traffic, and that’s what they did.  Instead of the rest (myself included in this case) who would just be sitting around cursing the government or JKR for the faulty traffic lights.

Furthermore, one good deed is bound to influence the others (expanded circle of influence).  When one started, some other around follows and synergy is achieved (it’s afterall a win for everyone) - Think Win-Win.  That has definitely influence me too think about doing it when I have an opportunity too!  And I’m sure it will continue to influence others around.  A little random act of kindness whenever needed will make the world a better place to live in.

So next time when we’re faced with any challenging situations.  Think - “Be the Solution”!