Tag: Work

Passion as motivator

With passion, one can even work without pay. At least for a while. Blessed are those who can

translate passion into profit.

Novelists, musicians and movie-makers.

But those of us who do not belong in that club can still tap into the well of creativity.

Create products that your kids want to use (to take their own pictures for instance).

Come up with a recipe that on rainy days, you yourself would want to eat it.

I just finished the 3-part 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami where he created a fictional year of two moons. His passion is in creating a surreal universe, once entered, you can’t get out (unless you can trace back the emergency exit where you originally let yourself  in).

Someone else’s passion tends to evoke our own. There are 7 Billion readers and music lovers out there.

Will you be the one who decodes them!

It might sound far-fetched. But your passion will help you start your own “religion”.

You know what you love.

What keeps you work for free. To stay awake with or without coffee.

If you can’t find it, at least, find those directions which your family has tried to talk you out of. They might not know the right direction to steer you into, but they tend to know what to talk you out of. That’s where you need to pursue. Leverage the rebellious instinct.  Surprise the nay sayers. The best “revenge” is success. To get success, you need to uncover your passion and use it.

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.

Inter-group problems

At work or in life, people are bunched together “us vs them”.

No way around this. Shared values and “group DNA“.

I am glad to see titles like Chief Cultural Officer. It’s about time we see how group think, group problems and group competition affect the bottom line.

As we move away from the Command-Control management style, which demands total conformity and compliance; we inevitably get closer to the chaos spectrum, where groups or cliques thrive.

Great leaders know how to balance these constituencies or stakeholders.

Get the buy-ins, ask for their opinions and contributions.  Make them think success is the result of their efforts, and even better, their joint efforts.

Nothing works better than healthy competition. Brings out optimal performance.

Parents like to play one child against  the other. Teachers learn that each child has a different learning style.

They should model after Personal Trainer, because each person progresses at various pace.

Back to groups at work. First, create a common vision and language.

Then obtain agreement on what are the metrics for success.

And of course, go out and win together.

When you have inter-group conflict, you know the engine is working.

Got to have friction.

Got to move ahead.

And soon enough, comes time for reward and ….yes, envy.

We are human still.