Tag: Olympic Games

From Co-worker to Co-llaborator

Some workplace didn’t even get to that phase.

People just share a parking lot, a refrigerator and maybe a Christmas Party.

Meanwhile, you can collaborate with  people miles apart, in different languages and time zones.

Welcome to the new work place. MNC’s have gone through this phase. From relocation to repatriation.

Employees got shifted around, to cross-pollinate and get cross-trained.

Management just hope for collaboration. They can organize people into teams, build them and encourage cohesiveness. But ultimately, the decision lies in each member. To help one another as fellow sojourners.

Times are hard.

I guess companies are hoarding cash, and get the most productivity from their employees.

The next and last step is to optimize team work and output.

Managers will need to turn themselves into leaders of team. Resolving those conflicts, working with diversity in cultures and expectations, and reward both strong and not-so-strong personalities. Teams need both the weak and the strong.

Just as society does.

For the period between WWII and  these past 2 wars, we in the US have lived off the glory of the past: GI bills and Dollar bills.

Now, with a stronger China and Japan sliding (though still an industrial power might), we need to acknowledge to ourselves that the playing field has been unleveled (this past Olympic screamed this message loud and clear).

Need to teach our next generation how to do things, fix things, and not jut buying things ( often times from the credits China and the Oil-rich countries extended to us).

In fact, some of the most basic life skills such as being courteous, being kind, paying it forward, saving, eating healthy, basic math and science and geography-history, need to be taught. Other digital skills such as texting, playing games, computer operation and programming, will come as given.

In short, new combination of skills are required for survival in this new age.

I am thinking of SMS contest vs hot-dog-eating contest. The former stays with us for quite a while, and the latter can be let go (nice and fun tradition, but it encourages gluttony).

Back to collaboration. People who work together need to make teams work.

And when team works, companies reap the benefits of happy collaborators.

You will be amazed how one creative idea sparks another one, and another one. 3M’s Post-It notes, HTML are just a couple of examples how creativity and collaboration really make our lives easier.

Look at your co-worker again. See if he or she needs more nutrition, exercise, or just encouragement. Be the collaborator you have always wished you run into at work.

The thrill of a trip

Essentials only. Portable stuff. Restricted carry-on.

Off we go. Leaving behind the desk top, roof top and all  the stuff on the counter-top.

While traveling, we put on more weight. Eating “lesser-of-the-two-evils” choice of foods.

Meeting and making small talks with people we had never met.

It’s  a thrill nevertheless. The exchange of goods and services. People come with it, to wheel and deal. To be the middle man. Silk road to railroad, Shanghai to San Fran.

We toss and turn. The vessels are not designed for sleep comfort. Want that, you have to go to the nearest Mattress Discounter. I was told the internal combustion engine was really hot inside. No wonder, in the heat of summer, it is only getting worse, even with coolant and freon to insulate us. One more reason for the switch to electric vehicles.

Those who take the train. It is analogous to one’s life.

Once you took that fork in the road, let’s say career vs stay-at-home, from there, many mini-forks will present themselves. And it’s irreversible.

People advise us first to pick a good team. Then, a product, strategy and exit.

It is to show who you  chose to work and live with are of extreme importance.

They can bring out the best or worst in us.

Dreamers, Doers or Nay Sayers.

Take that road trip, or that rail track.

Just be mindful that with thrill, comes (price) tags.

And pick your travel mates carefully. It’s going to be a long and winding road. But short, if in good company. That’s a thrill in itself, who you are with.

The Routine

Instinctively, we follow the path of least resistance (park in the shade, grab the nearest item on the shelves…).

Marketers make it their mission to study this, the same way scientists experiment with reflexive rats in the lab.. Nike even filmed the Standford team, trained barefooted, to see the landing and movement of their feet.

Creatures of habits. Social animal.

Maximum connections: 120, to stay meaningful.

Yet, we are now networked at hockey-stick growth chart.  Majority of the world, including what used to be called the Third World, got phones. Can you hear me now!

Mobile payment, mobile banking, mobile TV.

Nomad lifestyle all over again. I blogged about Point A to B.

Louis L’Amour said it best ” the problem with mankind is that we can’t stay put in one place”.

Train and now plane hobos. Air travel used to carry with it social badges: prestige and class (think Pan Am).

The same with the automobile when it first came out. Then the assembly line (yesterdays’ Foxconn) and high-paid manufacturing jobs at Ford, changed all that.

Everything is new, yet nothing is new.

The rich have to (and have always) reinvent the game, find new playground and fence it off to stay exclusive (can you imagine online education for the mass, live streaming from the Ivory Tower of Ivy League schools). It is all happening.

MIT, then Standford. My fair lady, for the world. The rain in Spain doesn’t fall mainly on the plain.

It is common grace (rain on the field of the good and the evil).

Brazil is hosting the next Olympic. Perhaps it is fitting and symbolic that after England, we shift focus to BRIC, with B for Brazil.

Something about growing ethanol down there. About reinventing a country, about female leadership in a vibrant and colourful nation.

Let’s hope that spirit and energy rub off on us, stodgy and austere nations.

I believe our best days have yet been behind us.

We just need to look inward, take an honest inventory and reinvent ourselves. Focus on the essentials and task ourselves with the right things. Ignore the critics. They are always there, taking shots at doers. And above all, believe. We have pulled this off before. Can and will do it again. It’s our good routine. It’s us, intrinsically and uncompromisingly, at our best. As Chris Gardner puts it, “only us can give ourselves legitimacy”.  Routine, but earned routine, not forced.

The limits

LG Sciences
LG Sciences (Photo credit: teamstickergiant)

If you happened to watch the Olympic men weightlifting , you would find out quickly that we have our limits. We are shaped in this body, given that much neurons and glued to the ground by gravity (tell that to the jumpers).

This is an unpopular observation. We are more used to hearing inspirational messages, that we can defy logic, the law of gravity, social obligation and even growing our nest egg infinitely (most touted during the “irrational exuberance” 90’s). Yet, from that screen, I stared at a physical reality: Korean, Indonesia, Colombian. All got limits about how much weight they can lift and hold.

Realizing and finding out those limits are the mark of maturity. In the end of all learning, we return to the starting point and know ourselves for the first time.  Some of us found out that our parents and spouses were right all along. Others have proved them wrong. But all got limits about how far one can push the envelope. Out of 24/7, 365 day world, we can only progress that much. Up the hierarchy of needs. Up to self-actualization  and Enlightenment.

This Recession holds the mirror for a lot of people to see themselves, their lust and limits.

We still want to hear inspirational messages, walk on Tony’s hot coals, and climb those fake walls at the Mall. But we also know, at least for the first time, there are limits to growth and limits to our personal wishful thinking. Great men and women know this after their term(s) in public office. They retreat to the range, some even grow hair (in Lyndon Johnson case) while most spend time with grandchildren where it matters most.

This is when the Allures of the world are sending out marketing messages, that you can have it all, without limits. Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake your booties. I will never forget the irony of the Titanic: no one seemed to know they were in danger until it’s too late. The scene we all know too well : “I am King of the world”. Fake it until you make it. Really? Tell that to the weightlifters.