Performance Controller

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results"...WC Print

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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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.

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With communication in web mode much more, is body language changing or becoming less important?

Body language as we know it, forms the major part of all effective communication. A test is, we rarely close a significant deal or change something complex as a team without at least one or two face to face meetings.

In Asia, as with many other parts, where English is a second language, I find to listen by also watching body language  brings greater success. When I fail to do this or I’m ambiguous with mine, sadly I am misunderstood and fail miserably. I found this too with raising my kids.

With so  many of us are now working and influencing things remotely, the opportunity for real face time is less practical. I am interested in views and experiences of people who can still remain effective and what actually works for them now?

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This man is brilliant at making a point that can grab attention and motivate others to understand their value.

In our company, as consulting advisors charging a fee, understanding our market and those of our customers is vital.

To help keep us on track Seth Godin and others like him are now playing an active role every day as our advisers in our RSS feeds.

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