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Do you think you could ever learn to speak in foreign language. Learning at school in Australia 1960’s gave me some limited choices. I chose French rather than Latin as I figured if ever I was in France or a French speaking country I could understand people.

Since I have lived, worked and travelled in many counties. Except for parts of Vietnam, and Canada plus of course France itself, knowing French has had quite limited value.

I do know my limited brain somehow interferes with my ability to learn more languages.  Hence English remains my dominate choice, even though work in Asia where Thai, Indonesian, Cantonese & Mandarin all dominate as the colloquial preferences that surround me.

Even so, believe it or not I can communicate in most and more without ever attend any classes or langauge  school.  And so can you!

For example  I am reading a new book called World Class ITnow that I would recommend. Here is a précis of a book review I was sent recently that in turn I sent on to a Thai colleague.

IT gets boiled down to 5 core principles (Mitch Betts Dec 21, 2009)

There isn’t any flashy writing or trendy technology here. A new book World Class IT (Jossey-Bass, 2009), by consultant Peter A. High, provides solid — dare I say timeless — advice for CIOs trying to manage IT for business success.

The book takes the CIO’s complex world and boils it down to the following core principles (stated here verbatim):

1. Recruit, train and retain world-class IT people.
2. Build and maintain a robust IT infrastructure.
3. Manage projects and portfolios effectively.
4. Ensure partnerships within the IT department and with the business.
5. Develop a collaborative relationship with external partners.

Highsays new CIOs should tackle those issues in the order presented above, starting with people and then moving on to developing a reliable IT infrastructure. High says the journey from ordinary to world-class IT can take several years, and even then you can’t rest on your laurels.

 

To make it easy for my colleague I translated it to Thai by using Google translate.

IT ได้รับต้มลงไป 5 หลักหลักโดย Mitch Betts 21 ธันวาคม 2009 06:00 ET ไม่มีที่เขียนฉูดฉาดหรือเทคโนโลยีอินเทรนด์ที่นี่. หนังสือ World Class ใหม่ IT (Jossey-เบส, 2009) โดยที่ปรึกษา Peter A. สูงให้แข็ง - กล้าฉันกล่าวว่าไม่มีเวลา - คำแนะนำสำหรับ CIOs พยายามจัดการไอทีสำหรับธุรกิจประสบความสำเร็จ. หนังสือนำโลกซับซ้อน CIO และ boils ไว้ต่อไปนี้หลักการ core (ระบุที่นี่ทุกตัวอักษร): รับสมัครรถไฟและรักษาระดับโลกคน IT. สร้างและรักษาโครงสร้างพื้นฐานไอทีที่แข็งแกร่ง. จัดการโครงการและพอร์ตการลงทุนได้อย่างมีประสิทธิภาพ. ให้ความร่วมมือในแผนกไอทีและธุรกิจ. พัฒนาความสัมพันธ์ความร่วมมือกับคู่ค้าภายนอก. สูงกล่าว CIOs ใหม่ควรต่อสู้ปัญหาเหล่านั้นเพื่อนำเสนอข้างต้นเริ่มต้นกับคนแล้วย้ายในการพัฒนาโครงสร้างพื้นฐานไอทีที่น่าเชื่อถือ. สูงกล่าวว่าการเดินทางจากสามัญในระดับโลกอาจใช้เวลาหลายปีและแม้แล้วคุณจะไม่สามารถพักผ่อนใน laurels ของคุณ.

This literally took seconds using the free Google translate tool, which has most written Languages. To do this I just copied and pasted the text to a html page and Google did the rest.

The practical implications of this are that language in business is no longer a barrier as we can communicate with literally anyone. Yes it is that simple and these days even my french has improved.

From my stats I know readers of our my blog come from many non English speaking counties. So I am quite sure they already know well about translation tools. But for most English based countries readers there, I would ventured to say, would not see the value of subscribing to and translating to, say a Russian website.

I do and  I am often pleasantly surprised by some of the high quality and leadership information I get when I translate some of these sites.

Give it a try and perhaps see if you can find new opportunities to link up and grow.

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A company with online best practice will likely be leveraging Web 2.0 tools and processes to create an engaging online community of customers and partners including collaborative capabilities.

This will include discussion forums, wikis with high customer participation and designated community experts tasked with moderation and administration.

To quote from the PWC benchmarking page on their web site under Global Best Practices^®:

Best practices are simply the best way to perform activities within a business process.

They are the means by which leading companies achieve excellence in cost, quality, and time and provide goals for other companies to achieve.

Best practices are not, however, the definitive answer to a business problem.

Instead, they are a source of creative insight–a proven way to improve performance, which you can adapt to meet the specific needs of your business.

According to TSIA awards criteria, a company with online community programs such as mufti US 2009 services and best practice Star awards Winner: Cisco Systems, Inc., will have demonstrated quality programs in the following areas:

Online discussion boards.

• Enables customers to post questions & answers to an online discussion board or forum.
• Online discussion boards fit into our overall web self-service strategy, and use cases for the forums (peer to peer support, customization questions, beta trials, etc.).

Collaborative content creation.

• Involve customers in the content creation process, by collecting input on documentation and product best practices via emails and enhancement requests,
• Leverage a Web 2.0 Wiki. Allowing transparency of examples of how customers contribute to or make suggestions about existing knowledgebase for others to link to this as self-service content.

Reputation model.

• The reputation model must be in place for the community, including the various levels (for example ‘Novice,’ ‘Intermediate,’ ‘Expert’), And have a scoring methodology for moving from level to level,
• A high percentage of the community members should get to Expert level within a year.

Usage and effectiveness metrics.

• Information is readily available on the size and activity level of the community It will be in pace such as number of page views, posts or other activity on a daily or weekly basis, average length of time for questions to be answered.
• In the discussion forum blog readership, etc will be measured.

Customer moderation.

• Customers have part the moderation responsibilities of the community, specifically the discussion forums. Internal supplement this to moderate as resolution resources are required Customer experts recruited, recognized and rewarded with reciprocal consulting services.

Launch/promotion.

• Training and self help web based campaigns familiarize customers with the online community and what activities were executed to encourage adoption.
• Community launches are timed to be lead in conjunction with sales and/or marketing?

Customer Impacts.

• Customer Satisfaction data is collated to illustrates customer experience with the online community.
• Indicators on overall customer satisfaction and/or loyalty are acknowledged to increases links to encourage the introduction of customer community programs.

Business Impacts.

• Actual business impacts of all cases are documented, including metrics illustrating actual cost savings or efficiency gains such as incident deflection, or call/incident avoidance.
• Other financial impacts, such as savings due to customer authored content or online collaboration are maintained and shared with customers to plan improvement plans.

How do you measure up?

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Here is Something to enjoy. I found this on Clair Hanbury’s site. She is proactively focusing on a project with Unesco to find best policy and practice on pre-service teacher training on HIV and Aids. Check her out if you are interested to know more.

In the meantime here is a Louis Armstrong version of  “What a Wonderful World” from performer Raymond Crowe.

 

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In the competency stakes there are several stages to achieving mastery. To understand this is to understand your value and what you must do to maintain it. As you become more capable the ground will likely shift as you realize what it means.

Consider the cobbler starting as an apprentice. When he begins his indentures, even the smallest task needs someone to teach him the skills. He is understandably quite unaware of how to even approach competency, let alone what it may look like.

You might say he is unconsciously incompetent. But his next stage, not surprisingly, is being conscious of his incompetence as he accepts, on faith, what his mentor and teachers say he still needs to know.

Once he develops skills he moves to an unconscious state once again as he makes it. But it still takes time and effort for it to sink in that he is is actually there. Consciousness does not return until the next emancipating stage clicks in, which may well be the point that sees him graduating as a qualified craftsman.

But what of the final stage to achieve mastery?

Read more…

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It’s time again for the annual ‘Stella Awards’! For those unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald’s in New Mexico, where she purchased coffee. You remember, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right? That’s right; these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S.  You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head. So keep your head scratcher handy.

            Here are the Stella’s finalists for the past year:

Read more…

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Morphing a single idea into a multinational organization is not new. The concept of using affiliates and alliances to do this has also been with us since we had people on the planet.

Big or small, building a brand is the key and this in turns is about getting trust loyalty and buying habits of consumer communities established the higher this is the higher the value to grow. To be successful Brands therefore need to be a intuitive metaphor of of value, quality and service that customers accept without question. 

For big business the recipe for growth is getting partners and affiliates also joining the game. It is also equally key to do this well to make the supply chain robust and impregnable. In combination it builds up a barrier to competitor entry and an ability to be able to add to the mix as product life cycles revolve in and out. Read more…

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With my wife Margaret, in June this  year, we visited the Bangkok chapter of Power Talk International . If you have never heard of Power Talk International you may be forgiven. To put it in context, in 1970 the Apollo 13-astronauts took with them three of its formerly named and long time established Toast Mistress Club seals to leave on the moon.

Power Talk, like so many others clubs of its kind, recommends public speaking as a must  for anyone in business, or who has anything to do with communication and influencing people. But even if you are not so inclined, being able to face the fear of speaking in public is  one of the best personal confidence and performance enhancing skills you ever can have.

As a past member from Australia, Margaret had been warmly invited to visit and give a talk. The regular 6.00 – 8.00pm. 1st and 3rd Wednesday of each month meeting was at Goethe Institute , Bangkok.

In her talk she spoke about her experience growing up in the grape growing district of Mildura in Australia during the 1950’s. This region was an area that had been settled by a soldier settlement scheme. Her father, Bill Broes was a WW2 veteran, who will be 90 on 24th this August 2009, had bought up a quota. This was also at a time when Australia was still a developing nation, so it was an interesting time to look back now.

Here are some photos we took of the club and some speakers that I have set to some music in a video as a memento.

Read more…

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Recently, I was helping a business understand some proposals offering services for implementation of management performance reports together with analytics capability. What we found, at the end of the day, was unit pricing was the major “criteria” for selection of implementers, regardless of the application, solution, experience and confidence in making the project successful.

If you have ever been to a doctor, which choice would at the end of the day cost you more? An experienced doctor or a “fresh” out of college doctor? For a doctor rookie, stomach ache could come from various causes, so to make his assumptions solid, he will send you to do several lab testes, which more or less would be included in the final bill. Compare this to an experienced doctor who’s been in the field for a long time. He could almost conclude (from conversations and statistical background of the area and patients behavior) the likelihood of the cause without the need for lab tests.

Another example is in the construction business. Which choice would cost you more between an experienced carpenter and a plumber who also said he can do the carpenter’s job? A construction friend of mine tells me that for every project he handles, he only relies on experienced workers, for in the long run it costs him less. Being able to manage parallel tasks and calculating the amount of concrete and finishing the project within the deadline is the critical requirements that can’t be learnt from college.

Although the solution cost seems cheaper while only measuring from the proposed price, experience tells me that they’ve made the wrong decision and will have to pay the price.

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In a context of  understanding the next generation of performance management thinking, to overcome behavioral change barriers using social networks, a recent Wikinomics debate on relationship limits got my interest.

This debate asks the question:

If its true our neocortex has a finite limit to have only approximately 150 meaningful relationships, then what is social networking achieving? Read more…

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Sometimes we can get all profound and studied about understanding human behavior and the types of people we need to to run our business.

And for that of course we need to look at the definitions of the important demographic classes.

This is one I got in my email today that attempts to define the emerging "Y" Generation

As my colleague from Newfoundland in Canada, who sent me this cartoon said, Now, make someone else laugh. And have a great day!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generations

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They say you should never complain, never explain and never threaten to resign. That is one of the Golden Rules of life. On this occasion I am going to break it and explain a mistake in my post earlier this week,  entitled NEVER Be The First To Get Old

The content was a poem, intended for another blog called Humour for all Occasions.

That blog hosts jokes that some of my friends share with me on a regular basis. You know, the ones that annoy us when we feel compelled to read them because they were sent by the friend.  For me,  forwarding them to a blog was one way to deal with them. Then at my leisure, I could read and share them without falling for the same trap.

So if you were are looking for a context on the Performance Controller Blog. I could say “Get a life. Because business it is not all about working”.  Hmm, I  may even try to make this  mistake again.

But as mistakes happen, it is interesting that in this medium, everyone sees it immediately. Subscriber and RSS feed services and in my case also,  automatic updating on social media sites like Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn and DIGG,  all grab the message before I can even say, OOPS.

So with a potential for several thousand following weekly it is a powerful way to get out a message for our niche and to express our irrational passion. Equally if we get it wrong it can be embarrassing or even  worse as we disappear into oblivion. In cases with the huge followings like Seth Godin has with his blog,  the embarrassment could be in the millions.

So with all the hidden microphones and echoes ongoing, we know we get overheard over and over again. So I do know we have to get better at saying it better as the stakes get higher. And when we don’, t even the edit and delete options cannot make it unsaid. Never the less the delightful poem sent to me by a friend in Newfoundland Canada, if indeed it was a mistake, is one I am happy to repeat.

If you missed it the first time enjoy the poem again here as I did.  Read more…

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The computer swallowed grandma.
Yes, honestly its true!
She pressed ‘control and ‘enter’
And disappeared from view.
It devoured her completely,
The thought just makes me squirm. 
She must have caught a virus
Or been eaten by a worm.
I’ve searched through the recycle bin 
And files of every kind;
I’ve even used the Internet,
But nothing did I find.
In desperation, I asked Jeeves    
My searches to refine.
The reply from him was negative, 
Not a thing was found ‘online.’    
So, if inside your ‘Inbox,’
My Grandma you should see,
Please ‘Copy, Scan’ and ‘Paste’ her
And send her back to me.

This is a tribute to all the Grandmas and Grandpas who have been fearless and Learned to use the Computer….
They are the greatest!!!

We do not stop playing because we grow old; 
We grow old because we stop playing ..
NEVER Be The First To Get Old!!

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Big, small, established or just starting, we never stop learning what makes customers happy and our business better. Having the best product, best service, best capability, best marketing and best people is just not enough. Business must be intuitive too. And this is not possible without conviction, knowledge and a plan of how to use it. Learning about business is an investment that never stops. You are welcome to share your ideas.

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As we focus on making it all happen it is easy to forget to enjoy the lighter side of life. Just to kept it in perspective. “The Ride of Your Life” by George Carlin is worth taking time out and reading every day.

George Carlin’s view on ageing is brilliant. He Begins with a question.

Do you realize the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we’re kids?

 

Read more…

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This story has been around a while but always worth recanting.

Bruce Sansome, Chairman of Natex Engineering Group in Australian shared this with a TEC Group in Melbourne recently.

As a  lightheaded refocus he prefaced saying

"When things in your lives seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee."

Here is the story:

Read more…

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With limited time available in the quest for productivity, we multi task. Or do we? If this is not true what is it that we do?

Multi-tasking I just learned it  is a myth. Something you do when you drive home and then wonder who drove.

This week I found I was challenged as I juggled my priorities and my personal life.  Having already reduced my to-do list to something sensible, it still looked foreboding.

To make it worse,  the unforeseen political agenda in Thailand where I have been doing business this month has thrown normality into chaos. Plus,  my daughter just announced she was arriving early to  visit me this week from her India trip, before we then head home to Australia together next week .

So it was time to step up my skill in multi tasking.  But before I did I decided to do some research on just what that was.

Read more…

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Being flexible to take advantage of opportunity is not one of the stronger attitudes of people. In the end we are creatures of habit which is what organizations rely on, to have us do our work.

But as the markets have been changing and work place thinking reassesses its investments, options for those willing to change are now considerable, especially for people with real skill now in demand.

As one of my colleagues said to me recently,  “Having a job  sure beats working.” What he meant was,  those who avoid dole queues and the anxiety of the job search, are those who can adapt.

In organizations it is no different. Getting into different work may be as simple as using the skills we have another way. Using things like software as a service and cloud services for outsourcing to get results quickly are now reality. They are being used for such things as sales and supply chain management widely and now are starting to surface in previously hallowed areas like confidential business analytics. But even this is outside the square for so many people like Mr. Duck

 

But think about it.  Even the  outsource worker has  caught on to how to work on a remote VPN access; And is also doing well in this new world, as many companies still struggle with an outdated mentality that will leave them behind, as others set up new tents .

Talented people and organization that are also smart  enough to see the opportunity are going there and winning.

 This reminds  me of the good old story of Mr.Duck . It goes something like this.

Read more…

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 Here is something a lighthearted yet inspitrational  A video of the US Navy demonstrating excellence in teamwork.

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