Researchers at the University of Tennessee list out several myths about learning. The premise that everyone starts with the same base of knowledge about a particular subject, everyone learns at the same pace, everyone learns best by listening, everyone will bridge naturally from theory to application, everyone should learn on his or her own rather than in collaboration and learning is the transfer of knowledge from a teacher to a passive learner results in excessive telling or lecture. “We don’t remember information totally; we reconstruct the way information connects to [other] information,”…”That means learners have to reconstruct the interconnectors or forget what they’ve learned in a short time. The stuff you remember is what you use to make the interconnections.”

FUN can play a great role in making the interconnections or associations.

Using laughter to support learning is not new. John Cleese, the famous actor pioneered the use of humour in corporate training videos nearly four decades ago. Madan Kataria, the laughter guru pionerred the use of laughing for no reason.

Humour in training and business presentations is becoming increasingly valued as it ensures attention of the participants. Using humour in your sessions is a skill. In our sessions we use the concept of frames. Frames helps you use and reuse the joke in different situations. Over a period of time you learn how to think on your feet spontaneously and that ignites humour.

Great sessions are those that are have spontaneity. When the sessions are light hearted and spontaneous, the results of the training is awesome.

In the next post we will talk about the link between learning and humour.

“The happiest people in the world are not those who have no problems,but those who learn to live with things that are less than perfect.”

A group of graduates, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite – telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the simple and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases, it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups… Then you began eyeing each other’s cups.

Now consider this:
- Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups.
- They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of life we live.
- Sometimes, by concentrating on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us. Enjoy your coffee!.

The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything.”

1. Live simply.
2. Love generously.
3. Care deeply.
4. Speak kindly.
5. Leave the rest to God.

I have spent the last few days in Melbourne, Australia.

The days with academics in the University and some of the world’s top  CEO’s of software companies was a refreshing experience.

Who is a digital native? Most likely your children and Gen Y’s.

Digital Immigrants – needless to say it is more about people in their 40′s and above.

It was an interesting debate.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister of Victoria made 4 important points:

1. Solution Pull is always more effective than Technology push. It is about soultions not how great the technology is.
2. It is always the simple things that win in the market place.
3. All it requires is to work till we exceed the threshold to get success such as Hotmail.
4. User interfaces and learner needs are more important than the features of your product. The business world here is buzzing with several new initiatives despite the elections here.

Time Management has always been a misnomer. We can never manage time, we can only manage ourselves with respect to time.That was a valid  argument, I thought. Today, I read Tony Schwartz in this month’s Harvard Business Review.

He says most of us respond to rising demands in the workplace by working longer. This will inevitably lead to longer working hours and will take a toll on the physical, mental and emotional health.

The core problem with time is that it is a finite resource. Energy is a different story. Defined in physics as the capacity to work, energy comes from four main wellsprings in human being: the body, emotions, mind and spirit.

While the body is all about physical energy; the emotions about the quality of energy; the mind the focus of energy and the human spirit the energy of meaning and purpose.

In each, the energy can be expanded by establishing specific rituals  with the goal of making them habits. We can make it a ritual to exercise in the gym everyday as some of us now look at the emails. We can manage energy depleting behaviours such as anger by taking responsibility for changing them.

I thought the idea of managing energy not time would be something useful to me. I like to explore it in greater detail in the next couple of weeks.

The arrival of globalisation has brought change in traditional rules and perspective on economy. Old economy defined assets as something tangible such as inventory and property. But the new economy had re-define asset as something intangible. In fact, tangible asset only make up a small percentage of the company’s net value. Most of their net worth resides in their intangible assets like the intellectual property (IP).

But what exactly is IP? The law protects IP in separate and distinct categories namely patents, trademarks, copyright, industrial design and confidential information. Although it is hard to recognise these values within an organisation, we must make an effort to learn how to identify intangible assets in the organisation to survive the k-economy.

To identify an IP, it is important to know where to start.  An IP audit is the most cost effective solution in identifying IPs. It is a legal exercise execute due to diligence purposes. It will commence occasionally for periodic review which requires expertise from business, technical and legal fields. The end result is, it illustrates a catalogue of the organisation’s IP. Then, the management can make a timely decision to use and protect their assets.

Strategies to protect and use these intangible assets vary. Some assets are unique which may have multiple avenues of protection. That is why, before determining which protection strategy to use, a few factors must be considered. In the case of chemical compound such as compound used in face cream or recipe, it must be distinguished first whether it could be ascertained from lab testing or reverse engineering.

If it can, patenting it is the best way to protect the R&D investment. Patenting gives the company a monopoly over the compound for 20 years and the company can license the compound to other companies to make additional revenue. However, company must also assess the commercial potential of the use of the compound versus the cost of maintaining the patent. Once this is done, the company can decide if patenting is a good commercial strategy or not.

However, if the compound could not be ascertained from lab testing or reverse engineering, the most appropriate strategy is to keep the compound as a trade secret, just like the recipe for KFC and Coca Cola. Trade secret is low in cost and last longer than 20 years if compare to patenting. Yet, company should only utilise this if they are confident that its competitions will not discover the formula as trade secrets are vulnerable. Once the secrets are leak, the value is lost forever.

Each method of protection will depend on the potential value of the asset when seen in the context of the business as a whole.

Summarised by: Farhana Zahani Zainal Abidin

Credit card has been around for over half a century. It is a small rectangle plastic object that carries the bearer’s status while freeing him from walking with pockets full of cash. Nevertheless, these cards has resulted people worldwide entangling themselves in the most expensive legal form of consumer debt. As an intelligent Malaysian, we must be responsible to analyse our ultimate financial destination, in accordance to our current behavior toward money. Will it be scarcity or surplus? It’s in your hand to decide how you want to behave and the future lies within your choice.

Start paying attention to your money now. Here are some few ways to begin the process of flipping your brain’s money switch off. Make sure you track your expenses. Write down your source of monthly cash inflow and your fixed expenses. After that, you’ll have a clear view of your monthly cash flow either deficit or surplus. Obviously you will want to reduce your expenditures and grow your income source.

The next step is to start saving your money. Find your long lost piggy bank so you can start using it and look for your savings account passbook to save money steadily. Then, you need to curb possible credit card mismanagement. Pay attention to how you use your cards and track how often you use it to buy something useless for the sake of impressing the people you don’t like with the money you don’t have.

If you are willing to take small steps towards financial discipline, you might end up in luxury with impressive stuff that you can afford, without having much trouble with debt.

Summarised by: Farhana Zahani Zainal Abidin

by David J. Pollay

How often do you let other people’s nonsense change your mood? Do you let a bad driver, rude waiter, curt boss, or an insensitive employee ruin your day? Unless you’re the Terminator, for an instant you’re probably set back on your heels. However, the mark of a successful person is how quickly he/she can get back her focus on what’s important.

Sixteen years ago I learned this lesson. I learned it in the back of a New York City taxi cab. Here’s what happened.

I hopped in a taxi, and we took off for Grand Central Station. We were driving in the right lane when, all of a sudden, a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his breaks, skidded, and missed the other car’s back end by just inches!

The driver of the other car, the guy who almost caused a big accident, whipped his head around and he started yelling bad words at us.

My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was friendly. So, I said, ‘Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!’

And this is when my taxi driver told me what I now call, ‘The Law of the Garbage Truck.’

Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it. And if you let them, they’ll dump it on you. When someone wants to dump on you, don’t take it personally.

You just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. You’ll be happy you did.

So this was it: The ‘Law of the Garbage Truck.’ I started thinking, how often do I let Garbage Trucks run right over me? And how often do I take their garbage and spread it to other people: at work, at home, on the streets? It was that day I said, ‘I’m not going to do it anymore.’ I began to see garbage trucks. I see the load they’re carrying. I see them coming to drop it off. And like my Taxi Driver, I don’t make it a personal thing; I just smile, wave, wish them well, and I move on.

One of my favorite football players of all time, Walter Payton, did this every day on the football field. He would jump up as quickly as he hit the ground after being tackled. He never dwelled on a hit. Payton was ready to make the next play his best.

Good leaders know they have to be ready for their next meeting. Good parents know that they have to welcome their children home from school with hugs and kisses. Teachers and parents know that they have to be fully present, and at their best for the people they care about.

The bottom line is that successful people do not let Garbage Trucks take over their day. What about you? What would happen in your life, starting today, if you let more garbage trucks pass you by?

So.. Love the people who treat you right. Forget about the ones who don’t. Believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance , TAKE IT! If it changes your life , LET IT! Nobody said it would be easy…

Hope you’ve enjoyed it!

Not long ago I interviewed a representative from a tech consultancy that was involved in a systems upgrade. The project was progressing as planned, the firm’s rep claimed. Everything was on schedule and within budget, or close to. Sure, there had been a few rough patches, but the client was now pleased with the work being done.

Two weeks later the client summarily fired the consulting company. Clearly there was a major disconnect between the client’s expectations and what was being delivered. The consultancy lost a valuable piece of business.

Typically there are several reasons why tech consultants get the axe. Among them:

No. 1: Promising more than you can deliver. Usually, consultants sell these kinds of overly ambitious projects at the boardroom level, meaning they convince senior managers they can provide a silver bullet that will transform a company into a lean, mean, highly competitive machine.

Remember some of the early ERP initiatives in the late 1990s? Viola! All enterprise data and processes would be magically integrated overnight. Of course, some of these initiatives dragged on for several lifetimes and cost a fortune—one company supposedly lost more than $100 million on a failed ERP effort – and for the most part didn’t pan out. In fact, according to some surveys, only 6% of companies consider their ERP systems to be effective. The upshot: a number of ERP vendors were not only canned but were targeted with lawsuits as well.

No. 2: Failure to win hearts and minds. A consultant can implement a system that delivers as promised, but if the users don’t get on board, there’s going to be trouble in River City. According to popular wisdom, what’s needed in these instances is change management. Fine, but too often consultancies underestimate the recalcitrance of the user community and initiate change management after the fact. We’ve given you this wonderful tool, and now you better use it, or else. Better to promote the benefits of the wonderful tool at the outset of the project and let the client do most of the selling.

No. 3: Lack of project management. The ongoing dispute between the FBI and Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) is a classic instance of the problems that can arise without adequate project management, ideally by both the client and the contractor. The FBI, you may recall, hired SAIC in 2001 to build a Virtual Case File (VCF) project. Four years and $104 million later it finally became evident to the client that the VCF effort was a disaster. SAIC was ousted and Congress pressed the FBI to get its VCF funding back. Meanwhile, SAIC claimed the VCF could be saved and made specific references as to how to do so. Too late. Why had it taken the FBI four years to figure out it was pouring tax payer money into a black hole? Why had it taken SAIC so long to shift into emergency mode to try to salvage VCF? An effective project management team would have put in place milestones that had to be met along the way. If not, alarms would have sounded. Of course, this isn’t entirely the contractor’s failing but the client’s as well.

Someone was asleep at the wheel.

No. 4: Taking things for granted. The aforementioned IT consultancy believed that all was hunky dory with the client, filing weekly status reports as per the client’s request. Since the client never responded, the consultant assumed all was well. No news is good news, right? Not so. Had the consulting firm solicited feedback from the get-go, it would have learned early on that there were problems and would have at least have the chance to rectify them before the axe fell.

With only about 5% of Fortune 2000 companies and 1% mid-market companies involved in the multi-process HR BPO contracts, there lies huge potential for HRO market. Enhanced global delivery capabilities of HRO service providers are driving demand for large multi-purpose HRO contracts. By offering plethora of services, new players entering into HRO middle-market are aptly addressing the HR requirements of companies with about 1,000 to 10,000 employees.

World human resource outsourcing (HRO) market is all set to exceed the US$78.8 billion mark by 2010 at a healthy CAGR of 10.71% over the 2000-2010 analysis period. As stated by the recent report published by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., the United States, with a share estimated at 48.90% in 2006, forms the largest market for Human Resource Outsourcing, while fastest growth is expected to emanate from countries in the Asian region, with a projected CAGR of 15.74% over the aforementioned period.

In terms of service sectors, payroll services market constitutes the largest outsourced service, with a share estimated at 29.34% in 2006. Fastest growth, however, is expected to emanate from the education and training services market that is expected to post a CAGR of 13.08% over the 2000-2010 analysis period. Other services independently analyzed include Benefits Administration Services market, Recruitment and Staffing Services market, Hiring Administration Services market and Other Human Resource Outsourcing Services market.

Outsourcing of administrative functions to third parties is not new, and dates back to the 1940s, when Automated Data Processing instigated service offerings. In the year 1949, ADP (formerly Automatic Payrolls Inc.) was the first company to offer payroll services to its customers. However, most of the services provided in the past were for single-process, transaction-focused HR services such as workers compensation, payroll, payroll taxes, training, or employee benefits. Additionally, client companies generally outsourced a few back-office HR functions, while performing other HR functions in-house. In 1998, Proctor & Gamble signed a 10-year contract worth US$400 million with IBM for outsourcing of its HR functions.

Contract negotiation cycles are getting shorter and buyer confidence being increased with Tier 1 HRO service providers entering into large and complex contracts that require huge capital investment in regional shared service centers with excellent HR expertise. By offering plethora of services, new players entering into HRO middle-market are aptly addressing the HR requirements of companies with about 1,000 to 10,000 employees. Number of contracts received by HRO suppliers is increasing, with the time span ranging from seven to ten years, as compared to earlier five-year term. Increased HR service offerings that include payroll, benefits administration, and employee care are expected to drive prices down. Further, by leveraging offshore resources and refining delivery systems, HR service outsourcing providers can significantly offer cost savings. Surging interest of multi-national organizations to benefit from multi-national contracts is expected to raise multi-country HRO capabilities of HR service providers.

HRO is also driven by offshore outsourcing trend with most of the outsourcing focused on processing services. Philippines, India, South America, and China are some of the major regions with more offshore contracts. There is a shift in vendor focus from payroll, benefits administration, and employee care services to recruitment, absence management, and learning services. Also, there exists a market shift in vendor focus towards business case metrics development. HRO is still a growing market and is rapidly transforming to an industry that supports complete business processes from an earlier model of payrolls service bureau.

HRO industry is likely to witness growth in the business from mid-market companies. It is expected that HRO suppliers would receive more number of outsourcing deals that are of smaller value from mid-market clients in the near future. Though few mid-sized companies can spend substantial amounts of over US$25 million per year on HRO, the number is on the rise.

Organizations are innovating on various tools such as performance indicators and standard HRO performance metrics for critically analyzing HRO processes. They are employing these tools to determine return on investment, and to monitor Service Level Agreements (SLAs) related to HRO functions. Corporate HR leaders are ensuring that services offered by HR providers are actually worth the value paid.

IBM, Hewitt, and Accenture are the major players dominating HRO industry, with considerable market shares. The industry also includes small and large new entrants, including Yurcor and SAP.
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