Business Defense Has Landed on Our Shores!

This morning I had an excellent meeting with Mr. Ronald Simon of the Handal Group. I say excellent for two reasons : 1. It is always nice to talk to those who are passionate about their work. Mr. Ronald is definitely one of them. 2. It was an eye opener for me on a new area (at least for me) of management education.

For about 2 hours, Mr. Simon took me into the exciting world of Business Defense which involves everything from business fraud detection & prevention to industrial espionage! With more than 20 years of experience (with a license from the Ministry of Internal Security, Malaysia), the Handal Group is at the cutting edge of this industry. Mr. Ronald is probably one of the few individuals in the country who are trying to 'professionalize' the whole aspect of Business Defense as a viable career choice. More importantly, he is hoping to make organizations in Malaysia see the need for their managers and leaders from all levels be equipped with some knowledge on Business Defense. That is of course if we are not waiting for a Malaysian version of Enron to happen first!

Business Defense is definitely an area where our current managers need to pay more attention to and it is definitely a new career path for our young people to consider.

Personality Differences at the Work Place

The following are some additional thoughts especially for the 42 wonderful people at Menara Maybank, Bangsar who spent the better part of their Friday evening on 24th November with me for their weekly MyTalk session on the topic of Personality Differences at the Work Place.

It was a pleasure answering all your questions as they definitely showed your keen sense of understanding and deep interest in the subject matter.

Personality differences is one of the factors that we often take for granted in work place settings. This is unfortunate as I believe most of the work-place conflicts are related to communication breakdowns which in return are often closely tied to the different ways in which people interpret words which of course, is largely determined by their personality styles. Similarly, many managers have confided in me how they don't seem to be able to 'get through' to a particular staff or are unable to motivate a certain employee while facing no such problems with the others in the same department or organization. On further analysis, I often find that in such instances, the manager has actually come into contact with a personality style which is either similar to that of his own or totally the opposite. Allow me to explain.

One of the personality styles which I call as the Enterprise are those people who are so focused on the end result that they often forget that their means to reach there often make others feel frustrated, angry or down-right resentful. Their communication style are often 'strong' and lack in emotive words which are more pleasing to the hearts and minds of most people. They despise excuse-makers and will not take 'NO' for an answer. If anything needs to be done today, they want it to be done yesterday! The thing is that, Enterprisers don't even realize that they come across as too hard; that is until they meet their own kind! When this happens, they will resent that person for exactly the same reasons why many others resent them! In other words, they can taste the bitterness of their own medicine.

On the other hand, an Enterpriser may meet an Analyzer who is a careful and slow decision maker. In the eyes of the Enterpriser this is tardiness and sparks fly. Hence, personality differences may come to the fore when one is in close contact with the same or opposite personality style.

I often say to my participants that when a work team is being set up, a manager should not focus on only those who can see eye-to-eye. Rather, there should be a good mix of personality styles in the team to provide an effective check and balance. As much as a team needs members who can get along well with each other, there must also be those who don't see things as the others do or don't easily subscribe to team norms as these may very well be wrong.

The solution to this : The onus is on us who are in leadership,managerial or supervisory roles to acquire some knowledge and skills in personality analyses and interpretations so as to better able to manage our people. As Jim Catchart once said, and acorn is meant to be an oak tree. It is in its nature to do so. By understanding the personality style of our people, we will be able to provide the most accurate assistance and guidance to our people based on their natural states.

More on Adult Learning....

The most effective corporate training programs are those that incorporate meaningful activities for the participants. For many of them, these activities are as close as they get to actually experimenting the new skills and knowledge acquired in real-life situations. As much as these activities are not 100% real-life in nature; they do help in making the participants understand and internalize what has been delivered.

In my experience, the best type of activities are those that are not too rigidly structured and provide ample opportunity for the participants to bring their own interpretations and view-points. For example, in a recent training program that I conducted on Planning and Scheduling for Effective Management, an activity based on the Work Break-down Structure was made more effective by incorporating the Work Responsibility Chart. This unexpected innovation by the participants made the activity much more effective. Sometime ago, I conducted an activity with a group of Customer Service Executives using ropes which was supposed to illustrate the importance of team-work and speaking one language to the customers. I had initially allocated 10 minutes for the activity and another 10 minutes for the debriefing. However, the participants were so excited to share their own realizations from the activity that I had to allocate an extra 10 minutes. For me, it was time well spent.

Adult learning is an art and science.

Adult Learning - Lets Not Forget the Basics

I suppose as we become more sophisticated, we also tend to become more forgetful of the basics in life. While searching for the latest this and that or while propagating a new this and that, we fall into trap of loosing ourselves in our own hype.

I find this applicable in most corporate consulting/training today.

Yesterday I was with a group of 6 great ladies who were all involved in Human Resource areas in one way or another. My presentation covered 3 areas : How to Develop and Retain Peak Performers, Training & Development in HR and Preparing for the 21st Century HRM.

Usually I will be a little concerned when the group is small as there may not be adequate sharing of ideas among them but not with these ladies! They were full of passion for what they are doing. Two of them were quite new to the world of HRM but their questions and feedback were insightful. The day-long program went in a blink of an eye and I wished I had another day with them.

The recurring theme in their discussion with me was the fact that they did learn many new ideas and HR strategies yesterday but they know for a fact that when they return to their respective organizations, there will be no one to share their new knowledge with and no opportunity to experiment with it.

This is what I meant when I said earlier that we often forget the basics while we search for the new and exotic. Sending our people to the latest training/development program in town or bringing in a 'foreign expert' to share his experience with our people will be of little use if two fundamental conditions are not met :

1. Preparing a mechanism for every employee who has attended a training and development program to share his or her new-found knowledge and skills with the others in the organization or at least with those from the same department.
2. Creating the opportunity and space for that employee to experiment with that new-found knowledge and skills.

The reason for the above is quite simple really. All employee training/development programs are fundamentally Adult Learning Programs and the above two conditions are, in my mind, the prerequisites to ensure their success.

Syabas! The People of CityLink (M) Sdn.Bhd.

Last week-end, I had a great time being with the amazing people from the Customer Service department of CityLink (M) Sdn.Bhd. Not only did they play an important role in making the 2-day program on Handling Difficult and Demanding Customers a great success, they also reestablished my faith in the future of customer service in Malaysia. As participants of the program, they eagerly immersed themselves in the new skills and knowledge that were presented to them and actively shared their own commitment to improve the delivery of their service to customers.

It was heartwarming for me to see how much effort they put in when practising the various new skills that were presented over an action packed 2-day program.

Syabas! to all of you and God bless.

A special thanks to Mr. Terence Mark for all the backroom assistance.

Living the Customer Service Code

The New Straits Times (Monday, November 6, 2006) published a reader's letter in which it was claimed that a staff of the 'ultra-moden' Rapid KL transport company insulted the reader and his mother for being too 'stupid' to understand the bus signs.

These are, fortunately, rare and extreme cases of service providers loosing-it in Malaysia. Yes, we have all heard some horror stories from the KL General Hospital, the Customs and even the National Registration Department. In fact even organizations that live and die by their service codes such as Malaysia Airlines and AirAsia have their share of service 'screw-ups'.

As much as these stories are exciting stuff to be sms and email fodder, what intrigues me more is the question : Why?... Why do these service collapse occurs among some of the most highly trained employees of organizations that mention the word 'world-class service' at every breath?

I would be inclined to say that the reason is that training and service-indoctrination has not been internalized by the target employees. You see, customer service must be declared and lived. By sending your people to such programs is your declaration of how important good customer service is for your organization. That's fine but the next step is, how are you going to measure whether the new knowledge and skills in relation to providing good customer service is being lived by your people? In essence, that's what it is all about: Living the Customer Service Code.

The 3 key questions that needs to be asked here are :
1. Did your people take away practical and implementable service ideas from such training programs?
2. Was there a proper analysis of what is the gap between your declaration and your actual living of that declaration
3. Have you built the right environment for your people to challenge the status-quo and experiment with new service ideas. As a good friend of mine often says, a Koy grows as big as the pond it is in allows it to.

Providing service (especially a service standard beyond the call of duty) is a psychological and emotional endeavour. The proof of the service is in living it.

Lets all live the famous Malaysian declaration of world class service standards!

Change When Times are Good! Please!

It seems that the mighty Microsoft Corp. is in trouble. It also seems that all is not well at GM. In fact, there are already rumblings of discontent at Sony Corp.

What? It can't be you might say. My question to you would be : Why not?

The biggest danger to an organization is when everything is going great. When you are as powerful as Microsoft, it is quite possible that you become complacent, slow to innovate and take your place under the sun for granted. That's why, the most successful organizations are those that are already looking out for new opportunities when there are seemingly no threat to their business or market share.

The worst threat does not always come from the outside. They often come from the inside. Ask Yahoo! they know this very well. Google is hitting them from all sides. Why? Yahoo! failed to translate their initial dominance into continuous improvement. As much as Total Quality Management is important, I believe that for today's organizations, Total Change Ability is also equally critical. Without the ability to change, today's success is a preparation to tomorrow's down-fall.

Malaysia Airlines, Proton and a host of other local players have and are still paying the price for this lack of change ability. Luckily, its never too late to change. More importantly, lets hope the other organizations are able to change before change is forced upon them.