Accept the chronology but reject the psychology

"You are very outdated," Shirley commented. "People don't use Tipex anymore."

The person who is merely aging is a 55 year old person who tries to look like a 20 year old. There is a difference between that and a porson who doesn't mind looking 50, but can talk comfortably with a 20 year old.

I have long since adopted a brand new way of looking at my age: I accept the chronology but reject the psychology. I other words, I accept how old I am, but refuse to let it affect my outlook on life.

Poker as strategy

"If only one day we can get together again, " KT said, rather wishfully as he sipped his tea. "Andy, Chris, Jimmy, you and I like how we used to when we played poker in our bachelor days over 20 years ago."

Poker is fun but it is not a nice and friendly game. It is brutal and is filled with deception. One must play with ruthlessness and a cut-throat cunning. There is only one overridding mindset - to accummulate someone else's - and everyone else's - money.

Despite all the good time we may share with our poker pals, we have no allies during a game. No matter what the stakes - cents, peanuts or pot limit - everyone there is trying to take away what is rightfully ours.

I hear industry leaders often talking about strategy as if it were some kind of chess match. The way I see it, the real world is much more like a poker game - with players trying to make the best of whatever hand life has dealt them.

Compassion has its place

"Can I request that I not go to KL next month?" Stephie requested. "My exams' are around the corner and I am very stressed out."

Companies can only thrive when their people are energised, engaged, nimble and responsive.

Yet if energy - emotional, mental and physical - is needed for productivity, how can companies ignore the demands that the human body makes everyday? Most companies spend more on carpets than on employee health and well-being.

To me, happier, healthier employees make more productive employees. I make the physical health and overall well-being of my staff my business. I was taught that a real leader treats his warriors as his most dynamic and precious assets. I am genuinely concerned with their welfare and I know that my ability to accomplish my mission is tied to their individual and collective success.

This does not mean that we cannot give orders or make unpopular decisions, but it does mean that we must be aware of the effects of our actions on the lives of others.

Shirley (right), Rae (centre)

Listening does not mean agreement

"Active listening and acceptance does not mean agreement." This was the quote of the day which I read on the internet.

My experience in sales taught me that listening without criticizing does not mean that people agree with what is being said. It simplymeans that they accept the person and recognise his right to his opinion. After they listen, they may reject or accept part or all of what has been said.

Indeed, listening does not mean agreement.

Attraction and selection

"I have thought through and I will have to decline the job offer at this stage," Anthea sms-ed regarding a job opportunity we spoke about.

The combination of good strategies and adequate resources may be great but alone it won't produce the results needed. We need the active support of our people in using the resources to execute the strategies.

That's precisely why I believe we should place our best people in the leverage positions. There aren't any perfect candidates. So I choose the least imperfect candidate.

Not doing our best but better than the competition

"We all remember Neil Armstrong. But do you know who was the second man on the moon?" Viru Sahastrabudhhe (aka ViruS) asked his class in the movie 3 Idiots. "Never mind, nobody remembers who came in 2nd."

This is just human nature. People like to compete whether they are 6 or 60.

"Do your best," I often hear people say.

Doing your best may not be good enough. It's just like sports. Say we are talking about bowling. If the best a bowler can do is 100, then sorry folks, it just ain't good enough. He's not going to win, no matter who he knows or how smart he is.

We all compete in some kind of marketplace - be it the World Cup or business - and doing our best is not what's required. We have got to be better than the competition. We've got to be the best.

A marketeer is an asset manager?

"I was wondering what you are doing at an investment company," Nickson queried. "You are a hotel sales and marketing guy."

The new paradigm is to view a marketeer as an asset manager. We, 21st century marketeers manage our customers' personal information in much the same way that a bank or investment firm manages financial assets.

The way a marketeer generates a high ROI on the personal information for a customer is by building and managing customer relationships. Hence, engaging our customers in dialogue isn't something we can leave to chance - it's an absolute imperative.

Healing and restorative gesture

"Anelka kicked ut from France World Cup squad," reported Channel NewsAsia. "The France Football Federation (FFF) said 31-year old Anelka would leave South Africa on Saturday after he refused to apologise for his unacceptable remarks."

If it isn't obvious by now, I regard apologizing as the most healing and restorative gesture human beings can make - because without apology there is no recognition that mistakes have been made, there is no announcement of intention to change, and there is no emotional contract between us and the people we care about.

"I'm sorry. I'll try to do better."

It costs nothing - not even our illusory pride - but the ROI would make Warren Buffet green with envy. And it would change our lives.

All in the attitude

"A message to all those who don't use Durex: HAPPY FATHER'S DAY" That was an ad with an attitude by Durex in today's Sunday Times.

A positive attitude does not dissolve life's problems; rather, it is an effectivce, constructive approach to dealing with them. Whether life is a privilege or pain has nothing to do with the circumstances of our lives; it is a direct reflection of our atttitudes. As difficult, as painful as life can be, it cannot defeat us unless we choose to be defeated.

Getting out of bed on the tight side every morning requires not only physical but mental effort as well. Execising, eating a healthy breakfast, starting the day with an expression of love to someone special are signs about what is going on in our minds.

No one has ever lived our life before, no one has or will face our challenges, and no one can take our place. The spirit exists within us.

F/Us

"Dear Sir, please advise when we can receive the quotation?" Jane wrote in her email.

Follow-ups (F/Us) are important. If we do follow-ups well, we'll drive the competition crazy because hardly anybody does it well and persistently enough.


68% of business lost is lost because of non-follow-ups.

Do we REALLY know our customers?

"Assume nothing, "admonished EH. "And look under your nose."

We might think we know our customer but we might not.

That's why it's necessary to talk with OUR customers to find out what their specific needs are - instead of just adopting generalized statistics. No customer is average.




from left: Shirley, Francis, Ernie, David

Living in testerone

"Dads are able to channel their inner child so much better than mums," Donna was quoted in The Parent Paper.

We dads, love to wrestle and play rough-and-tumble games with our boys. We can hardly resist it.


I read somewhere that it's been found that what boys are learning in rough and tumble is an essential lesson for all males: how to have fun, get noisy, even get angry, and, at the same time, know when to stop. For a male, living with testerone, this is vital.

Money - a marriage killer

"Talking about financial matters may not be particularly romantic," Gabriel wrote. "But it's good to sort out financial issues way before the wedding."

I read somewhere that marriage experts list financial issues and money as one of the big marriage killers. Couples get into debt way over their heads, then fight about money because they are so stressed out. Or one partner makes unreasonable demands on the other to provide more and more money to do expensive stuff. Or 1 of them is responsible and prudent about money and 1 of them spends like a Malaysian senator.

Parents, we are being watched

"Parents as role models to their kids," was an article written by Ljiljana in the e-zine.

Much of our parenting consists of being watched, whether we like it or not. Our kids may seem glued to the Nintendo DS, but they're mostly watching us.

My take is this: if we don't plan to be a role model, don't have kids. It's as simple as that.

Today's disposable mentality

"iPhone 4 to be sold in Singapore next month?" queried the headlines on Yahoo Singapore this morning.

My parents did not grow up with fast food places on every shopping mall corner. The cars were slower.Television was in its infancy. Money was tight. It was a completely different world.

Mine is the age of microwaves, handphones, blackberries, the Internet and extraordinarily fast computers that become obsolete about 38 seconds after we switch them on.

I think the disposable mentality and dizzying pace of our world has fostered an impatient "throw it out" attitude. People are like gadgets. If they don't work out like we wanted, we just check them.

Reasons to have kids

"40 reasons to have kids," Karen wrote in her blog.

Sitting around, I hear these reasons from my dear friends: "Because I wanted someone to carry on the family name," "Because I wanted someone to look after me in my old age," "Because we wanted to hear sounds around the house."

Some people call a baby "a symbol of our love", feeling that just 2 of them would not be symbol enough.

We parents so often blow the business of raising kids, but not because we violate any philopsophy of child raising. A football manager has learned a lot of his job from having played the game, but a parent has not learned a thing from having once been a child.

ACE

I am a part-time athlete

"Attached is the registration form for the NATAS Futsal Challenge on 10 July," the email from Ronald read.

I am a victim of a sneak attack by an enemy called aging.

And so, I have now become a part-time athlete, desperately trying to recycle myself to my former mint condition, desperately trying to keep my grandfather's body from taking over mine. Sports that once had been effortless fun is now painful work as I try to recapture vanishing skills and do what I once had done with such happy ease.; be as fast, as graceful and as strong as I had been.

Eddie (left), Jerry (right)

The issues

"We had a row again," WL moaned. "He always thinks he is right about everything."

These are the things that couples often argue about:

Money...who pays for what? why don't we have more money? why do we spend so much?

Children...who disciplines the children, and how? how many should we have, and when?

Family...who has to do the caring when a parent is ill or old? whose relatives should we visit, especially at Christmas and Chinese New year?

Work...why do you spend so much time at work? how come you don't have a job? why do you insist I take (or don't take) a job?


Just sometimes, solving these issues is enough to resolve the conflict. The husband gets a job and the fighting stops. Almost always though, there are much deeper-layer reasons.

Without children you could...

"We are going to start our treatment soon," Hoon Kim said while chewing his port bulgogi and squid. "The chances are only 30% but we hope to have success and have our 1st child."

Not being able to have children is the cause of much distress to couples. The late SH Tan who ran the "Dear Eskay column" once told me that the despair and unhappiness that couples experience is great, and that fertility problems make up a regular proportion of a problem page's mailbag.

As time goes on, and they don't conceive, couples can start to feel a failure. If they tell other people their problem they feel awkward - the don't know what to say or they say the wrong things. Many people give uniformed advise ('just relax and it will happen") or unwelcome comfort ("you're better off without children really"). Nothing outsiders can do or say is going to make couples feel better about it. They will feel extra pressure if their own family seems disappointed.

Here's what I feel: whether you eventually have children or not, you still have to take care of your relationship. It is important to remember the reasons that brought you together in the 1st place; few relationships are formed only to have children; and the slice of parenthood takes out of your lives is relatively short compared to today's life spans.

To listen and be listened to

"My husband never listens to me," Ms Reo complained. "I could talk all day and he wouldn't hear a word I said."

I used to tend to want to talk more than to listen. It was a habit that was quite ingrained. Those were the days when I would mentally be sitting on the edge of my chair just waiting for someone to finish so I could put in my 2 cents worth.

Back to Ms Reo. For over an hour I listened to her and found her hyper-critical, sarcastic and negative...and I felt sorry for that husband. She had built a climate of criticism into her marriage, and he had simply tuned her out. I had to admit that if I had been in his shoes, I'd have probably done the same thing.

Solomon said, "A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind." Now I know that to listen and be listened to is essential to communication.

Making her feel special

I watched "Valentine's Day" on SQ016. It's about how a diverse group of Los Angelenos navigate their way through romance and heartbreak over the course of one Valentine's Day.

There was a survey report I read which attempts to understand what makes a relationship successful - to improve the chances of enduring love.

The responses from women of all ages is summarised into 1 word - Romance.

Personally, I think this is the bottom-line: making her feel special. Guys, when we are with her, it's important that we're not just next to her, but that we engage her - in a very specific and special way - whenever we have the chance.

Telling it with stories

"That's the story of my first 9-months of motherhood," Dong Yeon concluded after the bulgogi lunch.

I find that once I get someone to share a story with me, I have a better idea of that person's priorities and world view. Stories give me invaluable information and insight in virtually any business situation.

Whatever it is, the story is going to give me a glimpse of the way that indiviual looks at the world. Everyone communicates in stories. Every story has a point. Every story tells us something about the priorities of the person we're talking to.