WHY

When is the last time when you KNOW you need to have/achieve something, you ‘just do it’ anyway depite not knowing the entire journey ’how to’ get it?

When we want to do something, it all starts with WHY…

•  Why do I want to do what I do?
• Why do I want to get rich?
• Why do I want to get married (or not)?
• Why do I want to set up my own business? 

When your WHY is so loud, how is no longer bothers you.

Talent Management, the new Human Capital Strategy

Talent Management is about the ‘HR stuff’ we have been doing… with a lot more focus on the CLARITY of WHY we are doing what we do. This includes knowing:

1. Where we are heading as an organization (business purpose & goals)
2. How we want to head to where we want to go (our being, our attitude. The way we do thing here).
3. Where we are now (strengths & gaps in between ‘now’ and desired business purpose & goals)
4. What do we need to do (What initiatives are most suitable for this organization to close gaps and leverage strengths to meet the goals.  How.  Including including initiatives in Recruitment, Deployment, Development & Retention)
5. How we are progressing (measurements of performances and results)

In short, CLARITY of knowing WHY requires us to search deep within ourself (or organization), to identify our purpose, and unique success factors. Yes, it requires lots of soul searching, and hard-BRAIN work.

To do that, NEW skills required of any Talent Strategist are: business acumen, market savvy, financial acumen, strategic planning, analytically skills, project management, risk management, marketing (influencing)… all of these on top of the technical HR know-how. It is very similar to what every CEO needs to know.

Now… that also means, a Talent Strategist cannot be an ‘order-taker’, but leads the directions of capitalizing organizations investment in Human Capital, and manage the ‘risk’ of doing so.

Attitude Has Them…

Most people are either great policies makers (including those who constantly pointing fingers to others and say, ‘you should do this/that‘) or rules abiding followers.  We create all sort of policies to make people behave in a certain way, and made rules and regulations to ensure it is followed.  On top of that, enforcement and regulators are put in place to nail down those who don’t.  We are taught to live by the rules or face the consequences of not doing so.

But we fail to educate us to live by the principles of the rules… more importantly, the principles of life… principles of the universe..  the unbreakable Golden Rules that builds characters.

True test of characters comes in time of trial and tribulations.  When one lives by the rules, it is a matter of ‘not getting into trouble with the enforcement’.  When one lives by the principles, the right characters are build up.

How the Japanese responded in an orderly manner during the earth quake and tsunami disaster in March this year is amazing.  The true test of the country’s communitarian attribute built through years of preparations is observed.  That… is beyond what plain policies and rules can do.

Note: Communitarianism emphasizes the need to balance individual rights and interests with that of the community as a whole, and argues that individual people (or citizens) are shaped by the cultures and values of their communities (Wikipedia).

Male & Female… Exchange

Over the last few months, I have been more observance towards this creature call male… why they function so differently from us, female.

Of all the advise, tips and experiences shared by many, I heard the most unusual explanation last week… male and female exchange their characteristic (who is in ‘control’, and who is more submissive) when they enter into menopause.

Upon entering menopause, the male’s testosterone reduces, and therefore causing him to be less ‘manly’ and more ‘womanly’.  On the other hand, as the female enters menopause, her progesterone reduces and therefore they became more ‘manly’.  That is why as couples age into their golden years, the female seems to be more controlling and the males, more submissive.

In conclusion, we are actually quiet the same… from a ‘whole-life experience’ perspective.  Except one fact remains unchanged… males have only one brain while the women have more than one.  :)

Know WHAT YOU WANT before deciding what to do…

Over the last few weeks, I have many clients asking ‘What should I do?’.

 The question come in various forms such as: 

• ‘We have been meeting our financial goals over the last few years.  But how do we create a long-term, sustainable high-performing culture as we expand beyond this region?’
• ‘What do we do next after we merged/reorganization exercise?’
• ‘Should I do employee engagement survey? Should we have team building? Should I send my leaders for training?’

 The key to many of these questions lay in first, do we know ‘Where is the organization going’, and ‘What does the organization willing to GIVE, to get to where it want to be’.

 “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
(Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 6)

‘If you don’t know where you are going, it does not matter which path you take.’   Similarly, if we don’t know where it organization is going, it does not matter what action plans we take.   But, there will be ‘cost’ to journey as such….

Following please find links to ‘creating sustainable and effective organization’ . http://www.right.com/thought-leadership/research/organizational-effectiveness-discovering-how-to-make-it-happen.pdf

Temptations

Through our life, we will have many temptations come knocking on our door even when we were at the happiest stage of our life.   Prospect of a much higher-paid job, bigger house, more beautiful girl friend, nicer boy friend.  

I have my equal share of temptations through the years.  To make the matter worst, they seems to be more refined to what I want!   I guess on the other hand, the older we are, we have a clearer picture of what we want, and hence the alternative options seems more tempting and inviting!

Yesterday, for the 2nd time over the last 1 years, I am again tempted with the opportunity of owning a sweet Fairlady… and this one is beyond what I wished for!  It’s a Pearl White, 370z convertible just like the picture. Very low mileage, well maintained by the same workshop I frequent, mode to its perfection.

Yes, my heart goes wild with the image of me driving the Fairlady, feeling the wind through my hair, painting the town red… yes, I love the image of being the lady that owns the car, before 40s, and enjoying the ride of my life.   BUT my head rules… there are bills to pay, mouths to feed, financial planning rules kicks in, depreciation vs. appreciation bla bla bla….

I guess at times, we just need to stop our heart from ruling, and make the right choice to live in reality.

Who you know…

‘Lack of Talents’ is the key challenge most organizations are facing while pushing for exponential growth today.  Other than the usual resourcing channels to look for talents, have you asked your best employees who they know internally or externally, might fit the bill?

http://blogs.forbes.com/susanadams/2011/06/07/networking-is-still-the-best-way-to-find-a-job-survey-says/

I personally like to leverage on the principle of ‘birds of a feather flocks together’: Get your top talents to refer more talents.

Back doors

When we have a ‘wish’, yet stay inaction while saying, ‘I can’t have it because…  I don’t know how to… I don’t have enough support…  I don’t have the time/money… I am scared… I am at the wrong time/wrong place‘… that is a back door.

When someone presents survey findings, and we spend more than 20% of allocated meeting time try to sounds like research experts, asking him/her statistical bombastic questions like, ‘Who carries out the survey?  Is it the American or Japanese?  Where is the survey being carried out? How many Malaysia organizations are included in the survey… How did you derived the numbers?‘… those are  back door questions.

When an organization or the government present strategic direction and action plans, and we said, ‘Yeah, yeah… we heard that before.  What’s new?…. that is a back door.

Back doors are easy escapes from our responsibilities.  Instead of focusing on ‘what I can do’ to get to where we want to be, it is easier to point to someone and say, ‘you should have done this first before I can do what is required’. 

It takes more energy, hard work and pain to face our fear, focus our energy on‘what can I do’ than pushing the responsibilities to others by projecting seemingly ‘intelligent’ statements / questions.

If you disagree with me here… what are your back doors? 

Costa Rica

I am going to Costa Rica!!!

She did it for her…

Over the last two weeks, I have the privilege of meeting and listening to the life stories of amazing women who took stand against all odds;  poverty, cheating, battered husband, working and leading in male-dominate organizations, so that they can create quality life for their sons and daughters.

Jin came from a very poor family in Korea, sent to America with a one-way ticket at the age of 22 in search for better life, with only $100 in her pocket and very limited English.  She gotten married to a battering husband few years later, gave birth to a child and left him eventually to join the U.S. Army.  She rose through rank to major and created history in the U.S. Army by changing the decision in Washington D.C.  She became the first lady representing U.S. Army as liaison to the Japanese Self Defence Force in a male-orientated country.  She also became the first mother who sweared her daughter into the U.S. Army officer Corp in 2000.  Today, an ‘Immigrant Housemaid to Harvard Ph.D, Dr. Jin-Kyu (Suh) Robertson is a renounce international speaker, a Harvard graduate.  She raised a Presidential Scholar daughter, who is now a Captain in the U.S. Army.

Another lady, Chong of  eHome Makers decided to quit her high profile international role from United Nations and WHO after her daughter was born, to avoid traveling globally like she used to.  Despite constant scorn and unkind remarks from her family and people around her, she single-handedly raised her child and eventually set up a community network.  A network that connects business partnerships and entrepreneurship development, helping parents and single parents to have respectful career and businesses from home.  Sharing and educating them how to create quality, balanced work-home life by leveraging on information-communications technology since 14 years ago.  Like how she had survived.

One lady from East Malaysia who founded and runs a successful power plant, managing almost 300 hundreds men in her organization.  Despite this, she is still able to live up to her personal principle and responsibility as a wife and a mother.  She raise up four children, putting them into best of school education systems, take effort to spend quality time with them, cleans the house and prepares home-cooked food for the family, even when she travels for business.  All these were done by her personally without the help of any housemaid like most affluent Malaysian do. 

In their sharing, all of the ladies mentioned this… it was for the love of my child/children that I did this… A love that fuels the strength to pull themself up from the bottomless pit, to preservers through unkind words and scorn, and the determination to create respectful life for their love ones.

Here is a testimony from a daughter.

Many a time, it is not about us…  but who we do it for.