2011年3月26日 星期六
Management and Life Stories: 容與不容
Management and Life Stories: 容與不容: "容 to tolerate I started this blog with the Chinese word 容. The Google translation of it: 1. to contain..."
Management and Life Stories: 苦與甜 空和滿
Management and Life Stories: 苦與甜 空和滿: "苦與甜 空和滿「不要叫我拿俄米（就是甜的意思），要叫我瑪拉（就是苦的意思），因為全能者使我受了大苦。我滿滿的出去，耶和華使我空空的回來。」這句說話記載在聖經路得記第一章。一位老人家住在伯利恆，卻因本地饑荒而移民，轉眼十年，在外地失去了丈夫和兩個兒子，現在回流返國時說出心底的話。這..."
2011年1月26日 星期三
苦與甜 空和滿
苦與甜 空和滿
「不要叫我拿俄米（就是甜的意思），要叫我瑪拉（就是苦的意思），因為全能者使我受了大苦。我滿滿的出去，
這句說話記載在聖經路得記第一章。一位老人家住在伯利恆，卻因本地饑荒而移民，轉眼十年，在外地失去了丈夫
這句說話充滿矛盾，生命也是如此，從甜到苦、 從滿滿到空空，是耶非耶?
社會心理學鼻祖 Kurt Lewin 指出每個人有的「生活空間 life space」是由個人和環境互動而產生的行為動力。這種動力叫「場 Force Field」，Lewin 所指的環境是人的需求而在人的意念中(腦+心)而產生的影晌，不同的人會看同樣的環境不一樣，也會因時間而
有了參照標準，引力和斥力有新的平衡，原本看為苦的會變得甘甜或是混和了苦中有甜、甜中有苦，生活(生命)
這個參照標準必須是 a) 不會改變; b) 遠距離的; c) 可見的; 及d) 唯一的。
2011年1月25日 星期二
容與不容
容 to tolerate
I started this blog with the Chinese word 容.
The Google translation of it: 1. to contain; to hold; 2. to tolerate; 3. to allow. Chinese dictionary describes it by taking the character parts separately : “宀”是房屋, “谷”是空虚的山洼, 都有盛
So the word associated with :
容庶(宽容饶恕);
容物(度量宽大,
容谅(宽容原谅);
容借(宽容
容宽(宽容,宽恕);
容覆(宽容涵纳)
容纵(宽容放纵)
The word ranges from passive tolerate (宽容放纵) of indulging someone or something. A more noble meaning of it is allowing and forgiving (宽容饶恕).
乐意采纳 To Embrace
On the same train of thought, I like the word to embrace. To embrace something is not passively tolerating something. Tolerating is viewing something undesirable but accepting it anyhow. To embrace something especially ideas and thoughts, is to buy-in, to pay interest in and to integrate something into the system. One has to see the value of doing so. Value is a perception. So to embrace something one has to change one's perception of value.
When something that I do not feel right. Sometimes I tolerate it when I can do nothing absolutely. But if I can do something about it. I change it and myself (sometimes more of myself) to embrace it.
不容 - Tiger mother
A small piece of news recently attracted much attention. It rides on the news of President Hu Jintao's visit of Obama. A Chinese mother was called the tiger mother because the way she treated her daughter.
Do we have a course in family management? If mother is the manager (supervisor, CEO, executive), what kind of manager would you prefer? Why?
Why would a mother want a super-daughter? For what purpose?
If a nation is full of tiger mothers and super-kids, would you live there?
A company or an organization needs to perform well, why? For what purpose?
If a city or nation is full of super-competitive firms and organizations, what would happen to this city?
I started this blog with the Chinese word 容.
The Google translation of it: 1. to contain; to hold; 2. to tolerate; 3. to allow. Chinese dictionary describes it by taking the character parts separately : “宀”是房屋, “谷”是空虚的山洼, 都有盛
So the word associated with :
容庶(宽容饶恕);
容物(度量宽大,
容谅(宽容原谅);
容借(宽容
容宽(宽容,宽恕);
容覆(宽容涵纳)
容纵(宽容放纵)
The word ranges from passive tolerate (宽容放纵) of indulging someone or something. A more noble meaning of it is allowing and forgiving (宽容饶恕).
乐意采纳 To Embrace
On the same train of thought, I like the word to embrace. To embrace something is not passively tolerating something. Tolerating is viewing something undesirable but accepting it anyhow. To embrace something especially ideas and thoughts, is to buy-in, to pay interest in and to integrate something into the system. One has to see the value of doing so. Value is a perception. So to embrace something one has to change one's perception of value.
When something that I do not feel right. Sometimes I tolerate it when I can do nothing absolutely. But if I can do something about it. I change it and myself (sometimes more of myself) to embrace it.
不容 - Tiger mother
A small piece of news recently attracted much attention. It rides on the news of President Hu Jintao's visit of Obama. A Chinese mother was called the tiger mother because the way she treated her daughter.
Do we have a course in family management? If mother is the manager (supervisor, CEO, executive), what kind of manager would you prefer? Why?
Why would a mother want a super-daughter? For what purpose?
If a nation is full of tiger mothers and super-kids, would you live there?
A company or an organization needs to perform well, why? For what purpose?
If a city or nation is full of super-competitive firms and organizations, what would happen to this city?
2011年1月12日 星期三
Power of Knowledge
Inside-out vs Outside-in
I am reading a book by Alan Fine. In the first chapter of the book, he talks about whether performance is P=C+K where P stands for performance, C for Capacity and K for knowledge or performance is P=C-I where P stands for performance, C for Capacity and I for interference.
(C+K) is out-side in and (C-I) is inside-out. We would say, if we were asked which is right, both are right and it depends on situations. What are the situations? Are they mutually exclusive when applied to a situation? Are they to be balanced? Are the Cs in both formula the same C? May be they are of different dimensions, like in the former refers to our intellectual dimension and the later to our gaming and sports dimension? Do they refer to different stages, like the former refers to early developmental stage and the later refers to executions?
Power of knowledge
One of the biggest issue is that both formula are static in nature. That is, they assume that C is a constant. When we do P=C+K, C increases along with the addition of K.
Certainly, the argument is true for concerns in sports or in situations when knowledge is not an important factor. I am in management training, and I agree that mere head-knowledge K (undigested, without internalization, with no contextual insight) will not help. However, we hope, by making K a living-knowledge, it will increase his capacity. So, let me redo the formula by writing P=(C-I)**K where the symbol ** denoted "to the power of K" and K is usually larger than 1.
I am reading a book by Alan Fine. In the first chapter of the book, he talks about whether performance is P=C+K where P stands for performance, C for Capacity and K for knowledge or performance is P=C-I where P stands for performance, C for Capacity and I for interference.
(C+K) is out-side in and (C-I) is inside-out. We would say, if we were asked which is right, both are right and it depends on situations. What are the situations? Are they mutually exclusive when applied to a situation? Are they to be balanced? Are the Cs in both formula the same C? May be they are of different dimensions, like in the former refers to our intellectual dimension and the later to our gaming and sports dimension? Do they refer to different stages, like the former refers to early developmental stage and the later refers to executions?
Power of knowledge
One of the biggest issue is that both formula are static in nature. That is, they assume that C is a constant. When we do P=C+K, C increases along with the addition of K.
Certainly, the argument is true for concerns in sports or in situations when knowledge is not an important factor. I am in management training, and I agree that mere head-knowledge K (undigested, without internalization, with no contextual insight) will not help. However, we hope, by making K a living-knowledge, it will increase his capacity. So, let me redo the formula by writing P=(C-I)**K where the symbol ** denoted "to the power of K" and K is usually larger than 1.
2010年12月23日 星期四
Complexity in designing an impeccable service
I learned some management and life lessons in my recent trip to Halong Bay, Vietnam. I took a local two-day-1-night cruise at Halong Bay. It was a very enjoyable vacation.
There are three basic components in the cruise that provide comfort and enjoyment to me during the cruise.
I learned some management and life lessons in my recent trip to Halong Bay, Vietnam. I took a local two-day-1-night cruise at Halong Bay. It was a very enjoyable vacation.
There are three basic components in the cruise that provide comfort and enjoyment to me during the cruise.
(i) Scenery - most people go to Halong Bay for its unique scenery. This is the environment more or less uncontrollable independent of the cruise one takes;
(ii) Operating company of the cruise which provides the hardware including the ship itself, the operating logistics and support such as programs, the food, registration process, the convenience, sense of security and so on;
(iii) Front-line staffs who actually perform the services during the cruise.
I highly rated the scenery. It is just magnificent. For number (ii) the company, it got high rating from me too. The registration and waiting room before embarkation are of 5-star, high class private club like with its own private prier. It is far way from the crowds. The company has a good name in the industry and owns several well maintained ships. The staterooms are large, luxurious, clean and well equipped.
Halong Bay and Honoi area was part of the communist regime. Such cultural background does not land itself to good services. So the front-line service can be better. Small nuisances like missing utensils at the dining table, lukewarm coffee, delays in program schedule, impolite and arrogant managers.
Halong Bay and Honoi area was part of the communist regime. Such cultural background does not land itself to good services. So the front-line service can be better. Small nuisances like missing utensils at the dining table, lukewarm coffee, delays in program schedule, impolite and arrogant managers.
In short, (i) external environment - excellent; (ii) the company - excellent; (iii) service - poor.
In traditional manufacturing, the interface between division of work is precise and can be clearly defined. The "distance" from a designer to a customer is large. The same is true for the distance between a production unit and a customer. The concerns in manufacturing are low cost, product reliability, and product usability. These clear and well designed interfaces are needed to produce millions of products and are essential for out-sourcing.
In service industry, on the other hand, there is no distance between customers and service people. The back-office, the supporting logistics and the front-line serving staffs are an integrated whole. The interfaces are complicated and changing. It is almost impossible to clearly define the line between one functional group to another. A good service company must integrate the many variations of processes in a real-time and immediate responding customer needs. The workers need to be high quality knowledge workers. The company must implement communication, logistics support, alarm and reporting, knowledgeable beyond his/her functions supervisors. Take the case of the Halong Bay cruise. The back-office should know exactly the quantity of utensils required. They should know immediately there was a lack of Tai-chi coach to fulfill the program requirement. High-quality front-line + real time support back-end are essential.
Thus I concluded, a good service company must be a well integrated tightly-knitted entity. The complexity comes, if the company (i) has a broad service range; (ii) reduce back-office process man-power and delays; (iii) reduce front-line influence of adversity. This is trading front-line complexity (costly serving personnels) with supporting back-end offices and logistics. By moving the remote front-end to internal controllable back-end.
I will address the issue of service automation based on the above observation.
2010年12月13日 星期一
Complexity and choice
Choices and decision
Marketing people knows too well that when customers are given too many choices, they become indecisive because the decision making process is becoming too complex for them. Have you ever go to a shop that sells consumer type digital cameras or that sells mobile phones or that sells TV sets? You will experience the difficulties in making an intelligent choice.
In consumer product designIn electronics product design, a market follower adds extra functionalities and lower the price to gain market share from the product leader. Examples are plenty, the ebooks, the phones and cameras. These product designers are too lazy to really find out what the customers want. The way to avoid feature overload is to set a limit on the number of features on the device. Apple is a product leader and has stubbornly set feature limits. In so doing, the engineers (or designers) have to make the features easy to use. One cannot rely on features as a selling point.
The Y-gen not knowing what they want
In the society, the young people are offered 10 millions choices. They have no power of independent judgement. Yet, the socialists, the educators and the parents insist not to guide guidelines to them.
Education do not include knowing right and wrongI talked to a Business School professor on business ethics recently. He insisted that educators should not make ethical decisions for the students. True! The students, when they graduate and become professionals, they should make their own ethical decisions. But it is our duty and responsibilities to tell them what is right and what is wrong. The decisions are they to make. The real joke is, the professors in this school insist "profit maximization" is right. On the one hand, they do not want to tell students what is right and wrong and on the other hand tell the students to go and maximize profit which we all (non-professors) know to days sad situation is partially some people makes too much profit.
Choices and decision
Marketing people knows too well that when customers are given too many choices, they become indecisive because the decision making process is becoming too complex for them. Have you ever go to a shop that sells consumer type digital cameras or that sells mobile phones or that sells TV sets? You will experience the difficulties in making an intelligent choice.
In consumer product designIn electronics product design, a market follower adds extra functionalities and lower the price to gain market share from the product leader. Examples are plenty, the ebooks, the phones and cameras. These product designers are too lazy to really find out what the customers want. The way to avoid feature overload is to set a limit on the number of features on the device. Apple is a product leader and has stubbornly set feature limits. In so doing, the engineers (or designers) have to make the features easy to use. One cannot rely on features as a selling point.
The Y-gen not knowing what they want
In the society, the young people are offered 10 millions choices. They have no power of independent judgement. Yet, the socialists, the educators and the parents insist not to guide guidelines to them.
Education do not include knowing right and wrongI talked to a Business School professor on business ethics recently. He insisted that educators should not make ethical decisions for the students. True! The students, when they graduate and become professionals, they should make their own ethical decisions. But it is our duty and responsibilities to tell them what is right and what is wrong. The decisions are they to make. The real joke is, the professors in this school insist "profit maximization" is right. On the one hand, they do not want to tell students what is right and wrong and on the other hand tell the students to go and maximize profit which we all (non-professors) know to days sad situation is partially some people makes too much profit.
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