So full :(

Sigh….this couple of weeks so hetics..so many meeting and job, wait for my essay later on ok?

"Gaptek" from design

This afternoon I’m proposing to my HR department about IT knowledge development. See, in my company there is a program to train employees in many aspects of business. Excluding IT of course, and no plan for it up till now…I just don’t understand how these people think that IT just a secondary knowledge. Do they don’t see that IT is driving so many business right now? Corporation that cannot manage their IT well they will suffer and lost their competitive advantage, since many of this competitive advantage is now created by IT.

So I wonder when do these company (and many Indonesian company) will start to think about IT. Do we want to make our company and nations “Gaptek” from the design? Doing think conventionally will not bring us anywhere these day isn’t? Sigh….I just don’t know how to make all of these people see…

Red : Gaptek is a buzzword for people who don’t understand IT

A drainer

Have you ever had a friend who have a capabilities to “drain” energy from other person just by show up? Haha, kinda ackward? But I have one friend who sometimes do that. Well this few days he’s been draining most of my energy, yea actually some other problem also take part in this draining session. Well I don’t know whether my energy is transferred to him, or it’s just gone into the thin air. I feel so tired and everything just seems not alright. And I think I’m gonna avoid him a bit, because this morning just by appearing beside me he kinda drain my energy that I gather last day.

I think people should increase the emotional reserve in every other people. As you probably know that everytime we talk nice to other people and help them we deposit something into our reserve in his/her emotional reserve for us. On the contrary talk bad, sarcastic opinion, bad treatment is a spending in our emotional reserve. So, I think it’s funny how is my friend handle this emotional reserve. He’s kinda deposit a lot sometimes by saying nice thing, help us, etc. But some other time he spend so much of his reserve and let the balance approaching zero (or negative? Hehe)

Well I just speak out here and learn from this experience..that’s all, I hope you all learn from here too, that sometimes people that you drained your reserve from is not willingly speak to you that your balance is approaching zero J

Singapore experiences

Last week I went to Singapore on business purposes. This is the first time I go outside of Indonesia, so believe me you’re gonna read so much about my experiences here. First impressions of this country is hilarious, wonderful and amazing. So what is the thing that make think that way? And what is the thing that we can learn from it?

Discipline & Order – one thing that amaze me most. I’m really surprise to see them queing, no one and no sign is being put there to say that they must queue. But they do actually. And the results is orderness. No heavy traffic jam, since every driver know how to drive well and every pedestrians know how to cross the street without causing a traffic jams. So I wonder, could we Indonesian, start from myself could copy this discipline and make the environment around us a little bit better place to work and life? Could we start with something small like : put the trash on its places, start meeting on time, cross the street using manner, not to smoke in public, give a way to other people while we’re driving? I know it would feel like hell if we do that in Indonesia, but do you….I mean YOU want to make your surrounding a better place to live and work?

Customer oriented – Like I told you previously that going to singapore is the first time. So there are so many experience there that are new for me. Like how to get to the MRT, how to buy the tickets, how to walk around there, etc. But amazingly everytime I need to ask something and I’m looking around…blast there you go the answer is put over a sign / billboard. For some of you who may be it’s an ordinary thing, but for me it’s amazing. Because I know that how do they prepare to do that? They think and feel like a customer (a tourist in this circumstances). So they try to think & feel how the tourist will start losing their way, and they put something to help them there. So it make a really nice place to go to, since you don’t get confused easily. So, do you put yourself in your customer shoes everytime you do your jobs? Do you think and feel like them? Or do you just assuming that they will know that, or that they will come to you at the end if they don’t know that? If you like to make you customer happy, then you should think like them and feel like them. Hire them if required.

Get dizzy with big thing – Singapore (compare to Indonesia) let their people dizzy with many other thing, and not many small thing like : traffic jam, security while we are walking in the street, polutions, smoke, public transport, etc. They let their people focus on their job and life by making all this “small” thing gone. Do you do that while you are working? Do you let your people, your subordinates, busy with many small things that are non-productive? Or do you provide all the thing that they required so that they could focus on their jobs, instead of many @*&!#(&#(! Kinda stuff J

Do it fast – They walk fast, they talk fast, they think fast, they anticipate fast, they work fast…do you?

Well I don’t really remember all the thing I got from there…actually I start to forget, that’s why I spend my time to write it down. May be next time if I remember anything else I shall write it down again, c u later on. Have a nice day.

Condusive environment

This morning there is an interesting talk in the radio. It gives comments about Indonesia’s way to fight poverty. It critiques said that Indonesia will never solve the poverty problems if we keep on doing short term action, such as subsidize the poor in the form of some money give to them in certain period of time. The good solutions should create a condusive environment, such as make tax more reliable and thrustworty so that small business could grow up faster.

Condusive environment, this is something that we also sometimes forget to create. We keep doing short term action just to keep the problem diminised as soon as possible. We are not creating a condusive environment that in the long term will create a better working conditions. Let just say are we choosing to increase our employee salary or make them understand how to manage their own personal financial? Or we keep send them to a training center, or crearing a learning organization where everybody love to read, learn and discuss many different issues?

This are something that we need to think about carefully, since if we doing it right may be we can make our life even better and easier J have a nice day.

IDR Rebound

Yeeei.. J Rupiah (IDR) is getting strong and stable at around 10.000 / USD. Hopefully is getting more and more strong and stable for the sake of this country. GBU

Some of this day story

Today when I wrote this email is Saturday, I went to a material store, I bought a wall paints. Well, I wanted to be green. But choosing which green is the one is not as easy as it seems. After 15 minutes looking at color sample, I choose one of the green color available. But at night when we go to another shop, I know that the color that I bought is not the one that I want L. This is so sad and disturb me. It seems it is one the bad side of my personality…feeling not comfortable when something is not done yet. So tonight I am not feeling quite well, I mean that my mood is not good. Hopefully tommorrow will be better. Good night…..

Opportunity

This last couple of day I have an offer, a very challenging offer, very good offer indeed. But nothing in this world is that perfect right? Seems like this offer will also potentially bring many problems. Altough it is not a definite thing, but still it make my heart shattered and worry. How about many other people envy? How they gonna react, etc. In this time of doubt there are some events that are really helping me, I wanna share it with you all.

One thing is back almost 15 years ago. At that time I go to my grandmother house. There one of my uncle said that I have to study very hard. Opportunity is consists of 3 things : skill/capability, opportunity and resources (such as time, money). He gave me an example from his own experience, he cannot study at higher level because one of this 3 things is not available. So he said to me, if you have these 3 things don’t you ever let go what ever that come to you.

The second thing is come from my colleagues. She said that “opportunity doesn’t come twice, and the higher you are the lonelier you are”. I really thanks her for this small words. This sentences that she send through sms is really helping me to pass through this difficult time. I hope she read this, and I wanted her to know that I will not give up. I will prove myself.

The last thing that accidentally also happen at the same day is 2 songs that being played at karaoke when I and some of my friends go out. The first song is “Reach” from Gloria estefan. It lyrics said “…..if I could reach, higher. I put my spirit to the test, I’ll do my best, if I could be stronger….”. All of this sentences is making me realized that opportunity doesn’t come twice, so now it’s just a matter of how you stretch yourself, how you put your spirit to the test, do your best and becoming stronger and better. Then you could reach it, reach something higher then anybody else ever reach. The second song I don’t really remember the titles, but it also said that opportunity doesn’t come twice and you could do it, yes, you could. Just trust yourself, do your best.

So, altough it is still a hard time for me, altough still many thing need to be prepared and done, I believe that I could do the best. I wanted to show myself, so even I am not as good as they expected to be I shall not ever feel dissapointed. Because I know that opportunity doesn’t come twice, and I put my spirit to the test, strecth it, become stronger and reach to the top.

Indonesian oil crisis

Ever heard about Indonesian oil crisis? This night I heard in television about Indonesian’s oil crisis. Well, I really don’t know that this country has suffered so many thing. From the year of 1977 until now there has been a lot of change, Indonesia is no longer a big – great country who could deliver oil more then OPEC limit to. Its production is getting less and less. What cause this problem is so complicated.

One thing that I learn from here is that the root of the problem could be created long time ago. Do you ever reflect your job, your life…and everything that you do? Maybe just maybe, that we do something wrong. Something that the effect of it so small that we don’t realized it until someday in the future we are shocked by it. Shocked because at that time we understand that the root of all this problem is bury so many years ago. So complicated that we so confused to fix that out. Just like Indonesia with the oil problem today.

So let us just set back for a moment, try to watch our life today. What we do today, are we making anyone hurt? Smile if you do not, and fixed that out if you do.

Love 'em or Lose 'em - #4 - Dignity

I start to read this wonderful book once again. It still amaze me J

How we respect people and subordinates is so important. Try to look at yourself, do you have any prejudice? If you do, come on, start remove it. Don’t look people by the color of their skin, status, age, geographics origin, etc. Like Abraham Lincoln said “I do not like this person. I must get to know him better”

If you have a sloopy moods (moods that goes like a roller coaster), then you should start to controlled it. Because whether you realized it or not sometimes when you are in bad mood you could other people feeling. And believe me you don’t want to do that.

Notice your employees. Pay attention as you walk, say hello to them by name. Smile, shake hands and greet your employees. They will feel honored, trust me on this one, because I once feel it on my own.

Trust, one word that sometimes so hard to earn and give. I myself still think that trust must be earn, not give. But still I give flexibility, and I promise to give, say, act like I trust them. Because I know and I feel it by myself that being trusted is more than anything, it is sometimes defined as success.

Fair is fair. Fair for you is not always fair for anybody else, so please ask them, understand them. You need to know what the word fair mean to them. As you think that you fair and they don’t then you shall lose them fo sure.

Anybody home? This subtitles is tickling me. I wonder what it means. At this book it said that sometimes as boss you so busy that you don’t even care for your employees. You forget that they once ask you for leaving permission, or a seminar registration, or a story that his/her mother is sicks. Spend your time, make yourself available and reachable by them. Listen, react quickly, don’t let them nag you.

At the end of the day respect and dignity is all about attitude. Something that is not easily created. So if you know that you have a homework then you should really fix that out from now on.

THE LEADER HAS WISDOM

Wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge and experience to any given situation.

Wisdom is the something that enables us to use knowledge rightly.

Wisdom resists group pressures, thinks for itself, and is reconciled to the use of its own judgment.

It doesn’t matter how much money you have; everyone has to buy wisdom on the installment plan.

The person who thinks he knows everything has a lot to learn!

Thomas A. Edison made the comment, “We do not know one millionth part of one percent about anything. We do not know what water is. We do not know what light is. We do not know what electricity is. We do not know what gravity is. We do not know anything about magnetism. We have a lot of hypotheses, but that is all.”

Wisdom is making the best use of knowledge. Develop the ability of discernment. The effective leader has the insight needed for any given situation.

One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.

(Diambil dari buku “The Ten Laws of Leadership” buah karya Bill Newman)

Take it ?

Imagine you are in the middle if a recruitment, you have one open position. But in front of you there are more than one person that qualified. Let say you have 2 persons that are very good, smart, honest, and every other aspects that you required. Are you going to take them both, or you still insist to take only one?

For me, I shall take both of them if I’m sure that there will be a position available after he/she finished his/her training. That’s why I try to create turnover equation…L it haven’t finished yet though…wanna help me?

Camping in Cilember...

Went camping last week..here's some of the pics






Running water...classics huh?
But for me...IS COOL !! :)


A flower & dragonfly in butterfly cage near the camping ground

How to ensure that your employee do feedback

How do you (as an organization) sure that your employee do feedback, feedback to their subordinates, their peers, their manager? Since if you don’t sure then it’s useless to have great feedback system, say 360 degree feedback system. Still it’s not being used?

So one thing for sure is to embed the control system into the feedback system itself. I do this using attendance form and feedback form itself. I’m sure you familiar with attendance form? It is usefull to track whether the feedback is being held or not, and how long does it takes. But it’s useless to track down the content of the feedback itself.

So what I do is to make the feedback material early before the feedback sessions begin. This long essay regarding performance, culture, etc issues is wrote down there long before the sessions. It have 2 purposes : to make the conversation focus so that there are nothing left behind and as a documentation. This is really important so that the content of the feedback sessions could be held accountable. Of course the content is confidential, but if audit is required then the documentations is ready.

One last thing is commitments. IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT…spend time (not just a minutes or hours) to think & to write the feedback itself. Spend even more time to listen, talk, and respons for the feedback. And spend time to take action for the feedback that you acquired. “Walk the talk” is important. And remember the Great Wall of China is not build in one day, so does your trust and system.

Have a nice feedback J

My PFA Program

Long time since my last essay…see I start to create another “charity” program in my department. It’s call Personal Finance Aid (PFA) Program. This is a small and simple program to educate all my staff about how to maintain their personal finance. Including banking, budgeting, loan, assets, etc.

At the first time I don’t think the support will be mediocre, but suprisingly the reactions from the crowd is great J. I even have to make faster since everybody so anxious to hear more. So I make it from once a week to twice a week. The whole program will be finished in about 1 month.

It’s really glad to help them learn about finance and accounting in personal perspective. I hope this program will help them managing their financial issues. Cheerssssss

Why do talented employees leave companies?

Early this year, Arun, an old friend who is a senior software designer, got an offer from a prestigious international firm to work in its India operations developing a specialized software. He was thrilled by the offer.

He had heard a lot about the CEO of this company, a charismatic man often quoted in the business press for his visionary attitude. The salary was great. The company had all the right systems in place employee-friendly human resources (HR) policies, a spanking new office, the very best technology, even a canteen that served superb food.

Twice Arun was sent abroad for training. "My learning curve is the sharpest it's ever been," he said soon after he joined. "It's a real high working with such cutting edge technology." Last week, less ! than eight months after he joined, Arun walked out of the job. He has no other offer in hand but he said he couldn't take it anymore. Nor, apparently, could several other people in his department who
have also quit recently. The CEO is distressed about the high employee turnover. He's distressed about the money he's spent in training them. He's distressed because he can't figure out what happened.

Why did this talented employee leave despite a top salary? Arun quit for the same reason that drives many good people away. The answer lies in one of the largest studies undertaken by the Gallup Organization. The study surveyed over a million employees and 80,000 managers and was
published in a book called First Break All The Rules. It came up with this surprising finding: If you're losing good people, look to their immediate supervisor. More than any other single reason, he is the reason people stay and thrive in an organization. And he's the reason why they quit, taking their knowledge, experience and contacts with them. Often, straight to the competition. "People leave managers not companies," write the authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. "So much money has been thrown at the challenge of keeping good people - in the form of better pay, better perks and better training - when, in the end, turnover is mostly a manager issue." If you have a turnover problem, look first to your managers. Are they driving people away?

Beyond a point, an employee's primary need has less to do with money, and more to do with how he's treated and how valued he feels. Much of this depends directly on the immediate manager. And yet, bad bosses seem to happen to good people everywhere. A Fortune magazine survey some years ago found that nearly 75 per cent of employees have suffered at the hands of difficult superiors. You can leave one job to find - you guessed it, another wolf in a pin-stripe suit in the next one.

Of all the workplace stressors, a bad boss is possibly the worst, directly impacting the emotional health and productivity of employees. Here are some all-too common tales from the battlefield: Dev, an engineer, still shudders as he recalls the almost daily firings his boss subjected him to, usually in front of his subordinates. His boss emasculated him with personal, insulting remarks. In the face of such rage, Dev completely lost the courage to speak up. But when he reached home depressed, he poured himself a few drinks, and magically, became as abusive as the boss himself. Only, it would come out on his wife and children. Not only was his work life in the doldrums, his marriage began
cracking up too.

Another employee Rajat recalls the Chinese torture his boss put him through after a minor disagreement. He cut him off completely. He bypassed him in any decision that needed to be taken. "He stopped sending me any papers or files," says Rajat. "It was humiliating sitting at an empty table. I knew nothing and no one told me anything." Unable to bear this corporate Siberia, he finally quit. HR experts say that of all the abuses, employees find public humiliation the most intolerable. The first time, an employee may not leave, but a thought has been planted. The second time, that thought gets strengthened. The third time, he starts looking for another job. When people cannot retort openly in anger, they do so by passive aggression. By digging their heels in and slowing down. By doing only what they are told to do and no more. By omitting to give the boss crucial
information.

Dev says: "If you work for a jerk, you basically want to get him into trouble. You don't have your heart and soul in the job." Different managers can stress out employees in different ways - by being too controlling, too suspicious, too pushy, too critical, too nit-picky. But they forget that workers are not fixed assets, they are free agents. When this goes on too long, an employee will quit - often over seemingly trivial issue.

It isn't the 100th blow that knocks a good man down. It's the 99 that went before. And while it's true that people leave jobs for all kinds of reasons - for better opportunities or for circumstantial reasons, many who leave would have stayed - had it not been for one man constantly telling them, as Arun's boss did: "You are dispensable. I can find dozens like you."

While it seems like there are plenty of other fish especially in today's waters, consider for a moment the cost of losing a talented employee. There's the cost of finding a replacement. The cost of training the replacement. The cost of not having someone to do the job in the meantime. The loss of clients and contacts the person had with the industry. The loss of morale in co-workers. The loss of trade secrets this person may now share with others.

Plus, of course, the loss of the company's reputation. Every person who leaves a corporation then becomes its ambassador, for better or for worse. We all know of large IT companies that people would love to join and large television companies few want to go near. In both cases, formeremployees have left to tell their tales. "Any company trying to compete must figure out a way to engage the mind of every employee,"

Jack Welch of GE once said. Much of a company's value lies "between the ears of its employees". If it's bleeding talent, it's bleeding value. Unfortunately, many senior executives busy travelling the world, signing new deals and developing a vision for the company, have little idea of what may be going on at home. That deep within an organization that otherwise does all the right things, one man could be driving its best people away.

Quotes

Garth Brooks - "The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself."

Integrity

You know what…what is one of the hardest thing to get in this life? Integrity. It is what you are when nobody is watching you, when nobody is complaining if you break any rules, etc.

When that kinda situations happen what will you do? Will you break the rule? Will you doing something wrong just because nobody see you? Will you come late when nobody is care whether you are late or not? Will you take money / presents that a vendor offer you when nobody..I mean nobody see and realized that?

If you don’t, then you should be very happy because you got one of the most precious gift in the world, INTEGRITY J

Ask Yahoo! - Why is it impossible to sneeze with your eyes open?

Dear Yahoo!:Why is it impossible to sneeze with your eyes open?Kevin - El Monte, California

Dear Kevin:The received wisdom states that if you don't blink when you sneeze, your eyes will fly out of your head. Thankfully, as is often the case with urban legends, this theory is a load of hooey. Your eyeballs are safe and sound in their sockets. For a funny pictorial representation of this hypothetical scenario, check out this urban myth page from MTV.

In reality, a sneeze is simply an involuntary nervous response to nasal irritation. According to this nifty science blog entry, the sneeze impulse affects a variety of body parts, including the abdomen, chest, neck, and face. During a sneeze, the impulses that travel through your face cause your eyelids to blink. This response is entirely automatic. There's nothing you can do about it. Sneezing puts a lot of pressure on your head and respiratory system, so blinking is probably a protective mechanism.

The point is that all of these responses (the abdominal contraction, the sharp burst of air out of your lungs, the general lunging movement) are intertwined. When you sneeze, you can't do one without the other.

Quotes of d day

Thomas Jefferson - "If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it."