Archive for the 'Business' Category

Looking forward to more EVs

Published on 22 September, 2009 in Business. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Shai Agassi is a pretty inspiring kinda guy. Having been a jet at SAP, he’s shot into space proclaiming the benefits of replacing internal combustion engines with batteries and motors. It’s a pretty cool thought really.

You might ask, “But what about when you run out of power?” And Shai is glad that you did.

In a few years – if Shai has his way of course – it’ll be a simple matter of dropping through the convenient Better Place to swap your old battery for a new one… and with that, cars get an ‘unlimited range’. Well, at least as much as cars do.

Pretty brilliant piece of business design too. Not only does the company answer a really big problem (how to give electric vehicles the range they need) but it could create a massive disruption to the existing oil-based infrastructure network. Things could get messy I guess.

Australia is coming (supposedly)… I wonder when we’ll see it in China. More on this announcement at Wired.

Create an awesome idea. Change the world.

Bureaucratic micro-enterprize

Published on 15 December, 2008 in Business and High performance. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I designed a sales brochure for a client. They wanted a Chinese version, so we had the text of the brochure translated into Chinese.

But the translation wasn’t very good. My girlfriend said that while it was better than Google Translator, it looked like a foreigner had done it – certainly not to the professional standards of a company selling business communication training.

So I told them.

Weeks passed. There was talk of hiring a professional translator. There were other people in the office who could have done it. But finally the company asked me to identify the areas of the translation that needed to be improved.

But in case you missed it: I don’t read Chinese.

You might expect that a small company – with at most five desks in the office – would have a dynamic, engaging and entrepreneurial spirit. But not here.
They have a culture of putting responsibility for solutions into the hands of the one who identify that the problem exists.

It’s one of the best ways of shutting down innovation around – and indeed productivity of any sort.

A lit warning light is a good sign that the light is working. Be careful of just turning it off.

Boost

Published on 18 October, 2008 in Business, Creativity and genius, High performance, Science and technology and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Sitting at the Manly Wharf food court, I noticed a Boost beside between the Thai and Sushi outlets. Boost is a great success story – the founder even published a book – and yet it reminds me of an old friend.

Kim created Juice Break many years ago. Before juice bars had really even hit Australia – well before Boost – Juice Break was helping make Brisbanites more healthy by introducing them to the wonders of fresh juices and intensely healthy nutrition. Kim had a great little store and brought together some really cool people.

But Juice Break no longer exists.

It wasn’t that the product wasn’t “right” – as evidenced by the roaring success of Boost and a host of other juice outlets today. And the timing was pretty good too – Juice Break closed as the first of today’s successful juice outlets were opening. They could have been a market leader, ready to reap the turn of the tide and the resultant massive wave.

And Kim was – and is – really cool! A surfer, he’s likeable and fun to hang out with.

There were many reasons that we now know the story of Boost rather than the story of Juice Break. But one of the most important lessons for me is that success often lies just a short twist in the road away. So when you find something that inspires you, something that you feel is worth pursuing, you really gotta go for it.

It can take a long time to make your dreams a reality. Research into genius shows that it takes about a decade before anything really significant can be achieved. So choose something that you love to do… Something that is worth doing even if others don’t know you’re doing it… Something that you enjoy doing for its own sake rather than because you believe it will get you something.

I’m doing my NLP Trainers’ Training at the moment. It’s exciting. It’s interesting. It’s engaging. And with my good friends in Shanghai I’m looking forward to sharing my insights with more people upon my return. Maybe I’ll make some money from it – heck, I’d like that – but even if I don’t, I love being here and doing what I’m doing right now.

I figure that if you’re doing something that you love to do, even if it doesn’t get you where you want to go – even if it’s a total waste of time – if you choose to do something that you love to do for its own sake, you’ll never be really wasting your time.

A friend was telling me about his friend who wants to study law but who fears that she’ll not live long enough to practice. She’s just 20 and doesn’t think she’ll make it to 25. We all have our perculiarities, but to me the reason to study law is to enjoy the process of learning and experiencing the study of law… Not because you’ll become a lawyer.

I’d love to give the appropriate source, but I can just hear Marianne Williamson saying to me: “Do what you love. Do what makes your heart sing. And never do it for the money.”

And now I’m going to enjoy my tempura prawn roll and Berry Crush…

Powerful concepts

Published on 30 April, 2008 in Business, Creativity and genius, High performance and Social development. 0 Comments

Sometimes we come across ideas that change the way we see the world. Reading The Fountainhead as a barely-teenager shifted my model of the world radically by presenting values and attitudes that I didn’t again question for many years. Continue reading “Powerful concepts” »

Visionaries shut up and listen… and not to focus groups

Published on 25 April, 2008 in Business and Creativity and genius. 0 Comments

Really cool stuff doesn’t follow trends.

Kinda cool stuff does – but not really cool stuff.

Google didn’t follow the trends set by the (then!) giants like Microsoft and Yahoo!… and the Pure Digital’s Flip doesn’t either – even though they sold 1,000,000 basic camcorders last year, they radically diverge from the path charted by Sony and the rest of the industry. It wasn’t that their Dan (PD’s CEO – not me!) had focus groups and steadily developed a novel product – “He paid attention, and created a product for them—without hiring focus groups. ”

Isn’t that where the really great ideas come from?

Business schools have been popularising the “Blue Ocean” – but great minds have been thinking this way for thousands of years. In order to get ahead of the pack, you have to either be a born freak or you have to chart a different route. And born freaks just chart a different route intuitively.

We make it hard for those that want to march to their own tune. Radicals are punished – and that it is a good thing in a sense… it is in the nature of the ‘system’ to challenge those who work to undermine the Nash Equilibrium presently being enjoyed so as to ensure that the proposed change overcomes the switching cost. It’s not personal – it’s just evolution.

To stand out can be frightening and lonely. Yet if you don’t be true to yourself – or a company is not true to itself – what do you really have left?

Great minds listen to their inner voice. In the modern world, it is often drowned out by the clattering of empty vessels, but if you can stop and listen to the voice within, you can start to explore what makes you great. What makes you unique? What are you better at – or could you be better at – than anybody else? What are you passionate about? If you could stop and listen to that voice from within, what would you do? It’s like we have an internal radio tuner that we seldom tune – and we get confused that all the white noise means that there’s nothing really there.

It is still your song to sing… if you dare.

Communication is not that difficult… REALLY!!!

Published on 28 January, 2008 in Business, Creativity and genius, High performance, Overcoming, Self-awareness and Stories. 4 Comments

When I was in primary school I knew that I was going to enjoy public speaking. Debating was my first love though my attention shifted towards public speaking and training. Right now I’m involved with three Toastmasters Clubs here in Shanghai – to me, it still offers the best value speaking training in the world today. Yet I am still staggered at how people who call themselves leaders can possess such embarrassing communication skills. Continue reading “Communication is not that difficult… REALLY!!!” »

I love great service

Published on 9 January, 2008 in Business, relationships and Stories. 2 Comments

Great service in China doesn’t come often, but when it does it really feels great. After a saga of mixups, I just received a box of goodies today – my new bluetooth stereo headset and a cable to connect my phone to my stereo speakers. I love them – and they sound great – but the biggest buzz that I got out of it was the great service that I received from Shirley Pun and Wendy Wu from Expansys.

While they’re part of one of the biggest electronics companies around, they took the time to make sure that everything went wonderfully smoothly for my precise requirements amid returns, order changes and changes in destination. It’s a great thing to run a company that is mostly online – and they’re great at delivering top quality for a great price – but this experience has brought home to me that those rare occasions that you can interface with your customers make a disproportionate impact on the customer experience.

It’s like family. Most of the time you don’t see each other. Maybe an email or a card from time to time… which makes those rare occasions that you do get together all the more memorable and important. And makes it even more important to make sure you get it right when you do get the chance to make contact.

What drives you?

Published on 11 October, 2007 in Business, Creativity and genius, High performance, Lifestyle and Self-awareness. 2 Comments

A few minutes ago, I was asked to attend an induction ceremony. As I perused the agenda for the early morning meeting (my unborn own child would be considerate enough to wait until after 8:45am on a Saturday morning to be born!!!) outlined eight outcomes… of which at most one were relevant to me. For me, that’s the sort of meeting that I try fervently to avoid, so I phoned the person who called the meeting to confirm whether I needed to attend… and the response that I got astounded me: “it’s procedure”.

“it’s procedure”!!!!!

Maybe waisting your time is “procedure” for some, but I like to not be one of those people… but it got me thinking about motivations. I realised – as I was speaking with the MBA-educated meeting convener – that she was motivated by fulfilling the criteria (going through the motions or just doing stuff), rather than actually achieving outcomes.

It really got me annoyed for a few minutes… until I got curious.

I noticed that some people sincerely believe that life is accomplished by going through the motions… it’s more than the difference between being efficient and being effective – I’m really talking about alignment. I’m talking about the importance of getting your actions and outcomes aligned with your overall direction or vision, and consistent with your values.

So where are you at? What are your values? How aligned are you? How aligned is your organisation?

There are now more than a hundred billionaires in China – and the youngest was born in the 1980s! And you can bet that they are lean, focused and disciplined to get profit… and profit is where you are better aligned to deliver value than your competitors. Fundamentally, that’s why capitalism can work so well… it rewards and challenges us to create ever-greater value.

In a world of hypercompetition, free design (as it is once you get to scale) and a boundary-less world alignment is everything… to deliver alignment you have to design it, necessitating self-awareness and the determination to understand your underlying values.

Because if you don’t, you can be sure that someone else will.

Who is John Galt?

Published on 16 September, 2007 in Business, Cool friends and ideas, Creativity and genius, High performance, relationships, Self-awareness and Social development. 2 Comments

The New York Times has just published an article acknowledging the role played by Ayn Rand in the thinking of modern capitalists. My Grandfather gave me The Fountainhead when I was an arrogant 13-year-old with a warning that the first half was boring but the second half made it worthwhile. He was right on both counts.

While “the virtue of selfishness” might be very unpopular as a phrase, I was transformed by this book and still have it together with my Grandfather’s copy of Atlas Shrugged in a special place in my bookcase at home.

It’s not a complete philosophy. Assumptions arrogantly taken for “axioms” are adopted by ignorant idealogues undermine the intellectual integrity that Objectivists purport to uphold. However, as James M. Kilts is quoted as noting in the NYT article, Ayn Rand’s works uphold a very important value that has few other sources:

“that excellence should be your goal”

Spiritual masters, NLPers and psychologists are largely and unusually in agreement (though they won’t let you know!): Self-actualisers, prime mover geniuses and happy “ordinary” people everywhere live in accordance with the vision that Rand had for the world… rather than being the victim of what other people want for you or think of you, may we all take personal responsibilty for how you feel, what you think and the life that you live.

Be excellent.

How do you solve a problem?

Published on 7 September, 2007 in Business, Creativity and genius, High performance, Self-awareness and Social development. 3 Comments

Great speeches don’t solve problems, though bold statements and profound ideas can. As I was watching Andrew’s presentation on TED, I was reminded of my days of contemplating political economy and constitutional theory and back to conversations with my Sri Lankan law school professor… ah, the good old days!

Putting more resources into a dysfunctional system makes that system more dysfunctional just as driving faster in the wrong direction just takes you further from where you want to go.

Solutions to the real problems come by lifting our level of thinking and clarifying our desired outcome. Becoming a great problem solver can come by elevating your thinking, getting better at clarifying your outcomes and framing the situation in a manner that so that it fits familiar situations (through models or frameworks).

Andrew spoke about how giving aid to Africa strengthened corrupt governments and undermined the need to build the rules for sustainable wealth creation systems. But I especially loved his simple ending: That great speeches should be like miniskirts – short enough to arouse interest but long enough to cover the subject.

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