"" Welcome to my thoughts: 2010

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Work life balance

Would you hire a workaholic candidate for a newly started business? Would you marry a workaholic person? If you ask a first question to an employer he might say yes. But if you ask a second question to a husband or wife to be, you would get a different answer. In fact, depending on the type of the job that involves high level stress and dreary, the employer might also say NO to a first question. For instance, if a doctor is working excessively with no rest, the chances of making mistakes involuntarily would very high.

So that work-life balance is important. Work-life balance is assigning and prioritizing time to all factors that helps individual to attain “satisfaction” without depriving the needs of another factor. The most important factors include Family, Self, Employer, Friends and Religion. Furthermore, it could be divided into two "work" (career and ambition) on one side and "life" (pleasure, leisure, family and spiritual development) on the other.

Unfortunately many managers encourage the employees to work long hours. Often we see “able to be work long hours” as one of the requirements in order to qualify for the job. Research shows that healthy and balanced work-life is related to increase in productivity in the long run. Some managers are too concerned for short term results than the long term benefits. As a result, those managers give additional pressure to the employees. In the meantime, these employees also get pressure from family as well as friends. In the end, the employees’ stress level increases and affect their productivity.

People do perceive work-life balance differently. While women are

positive on balancing their life style, when men see it negatively and found less important.


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Thursday, September 9, 2010

Eid Greeting

I wish a very happy and auspicious Eidhul Fithr to all readers and my dearest friends.

eid-mubarak2


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Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Appreciate your best talents before they leave

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Recognizing best talent is important to retain top-notch employees. It would be better for a company as well as a manager to have top performers in their team, whom they can count on to produce right results; who can think ahead of what else needs to be done without being told.

We do not see many managers praising or recognizing their employees’ contribution. In fact, they often inadvertently marginalize their top performers and sends unwelcoming messages. As a result, they start seeking for a better opportunity from out side of the organization. Unfortunately managers have difficulties in dealing with their best talents or exceptional performers.

Experts suggest there may be two reasons why managers are unable to deal with best talents. (1) lack of self confidence and (2) lack of imagination. Sometimes when the employee is more energetic and starts performing better, managers feel threatened. Furthermore, these top-notch employees create additional pressure to managers. When it happens, managers start thinking whether I can be his boss, when my employee is smarter? Consequently, such managers demonize top-performing employees and make them frustrate. Naturally incompetent managers do not attract high talents or top-performing employees.

The second reason is that managers not know what to do with them. When the employee completes his tasks ahead of others, managers are not plan next task for him. Therefore, the employee starts engaging with some other job to pass his time.

Ashkenas recommends a guideline to solve this problem;

Ø Remember that hiring and developing people who are smarter than you is one of the best decisions a manager can make. The more talent you have on your team, the higher your performance. There is no substitute for an A-team.

Ø Once you have really good people, take advantage of them. Stretch them. Challenge them. Find out what they are good at — and what they need to learn. Craft assignments that will take them to the next level.

Ø Give your best people credit and visibility. Let others know what they are doing. Remember that they are corporate assets and not just members of your team.

Ø Be willing to let your best people go to new opportunities if it makes sense for their development and learning. Don't push them to leave before they have made a real contribution, but don't needlessly hold on to them either.

Source: HBR


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Thursday, June 24, 2010

hicard MMS & internet setting for iphone 3G/3Gs

The following MMS & internet setting is applicable for singtel prepaid(hicard) uses. Once you inserted your prepaid simcard into your iphone, automatically it will configure by itself. All you need to do is to change two things (marked in red),  which is access point name (APN) and password.

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Setting >>>> General>>>> Network>>>> Please turn on the cellular data. After that click to the cellular data network, now you would be able to see cellular data settings. Please key in the information as follows

Under cellular data

APN: hicard

Username: 65ideas

Password: 65 followed by your phone number (e.g. 65123456)

 

Under MMS

APN: hicard

Username: 65ideas

Password: 65 followed by your phone number (e.g. 65123456)

MMSC: http://mms.singtel.com:10021/mmsct

MMS Proxy: 165.21.42.84:8080

MMS Max Message: 3072009

I have tested it and it works well for me. Please take note that the above information is only for education purpose only. Please visit to http://www.ideas.singtel.com to know more about data charge rates.

Source: Singtel phone configuration


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Monday, April 19, 2010

Definition of entrepreneur

Entrepreneur is an individual who is able to think innovatively than conventional way of doing things, by challenging status quo with the aim of creating a business opportunities, be fearless to failure and take risks of investing resources, and understand the market where the business is conducting to generate wealth for an individual and give benefits to general public.

Furthermore, an entrepreneur should have ability to foresee and think in many different perspectives to explore ways to create business opportunities. Instead of waiting for luck to strike, prospective entrepreneur must be a firm believer that final outcome always depends on diligent hard work and concrete judgment, therefore an entrepreneur should be proactive and should have the capacity to maneuver and direct the outcome to achieve mission and vision of the business venture.

Being an optimist, an entrepreneur should be willing to address changes that may take place from time to time boldly and swiftly in order to meet the needs of customers. Staying ahead of competitors is vital for an entrepreneur to have most accurate information, customers taste, and market changes. Therefore entrepreneur should be master of proficiency. In addition, determination of entrepreneur always enhances ability to learn from mistakes and fight against every peculiar that may face. For instance, George Quek, the managing director of BreadTalk is a fine example of successful entrepreneur. He is also an executive director of Topwin.

He started his business in Taiwan with no prior experience on the field however his determination and passion drove him towards a successful businessman. Although his first attempt in business - Taiwan’s number one Dragon beard candy which he himself designed was a great success with over S$ 240,000 per month as sales, nonetheless his second attempt of introducing of mince pork noodles to Taiwan was unsuccessful. To create business venture he showed his courage and willingness by spending three months in Singapore to develop his noodles making skills.

However, he took his failure positively as learning experience and went on exploring ways making him successful in his third idea leaving him a very successful 21 outlets around the Taiwan. Since he is willing to take calculated risk and able to foresee the needs of community, his entrepreneurial spirit sparked after returning to Singapore making him opening of BreadTalk. With his immense knowledge and experience in food industry, over the years BreadTalk has grown Island-wide with many outlets. Successful entrepreneur should be able to move around and explore for new ideas, so he got the idea of creating BreadTalk from his exploration of Japanese and Taiwanese quality fine bread which does not exists in Singapore. Potential entrepreneur should understands importance of managing resources wisely, and making quick decision, Quek always believes that the wealth that he get must be shared among employees and help needy people in the society.


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Sunday, January 31, 2010

How to install Dhivehi Fonts to Iphone

Since I was able to  install Dhivehi fonts to my phone after jailbreak, but some experts say it is possible to do it without jailbreak or Cydia too. You may need to download and install this software in order to do it (without jailbreak). And also note that I am using Windows Vista. I think it works in Mac & XP as well.

Here is the stuff that you need before you start installation

1- Download WinSCP, to use desktop Click here for instruction, how to use WinSCP

2- Click here to download Dhivehifonts and Plist for iphone/itouch. And extract it.

3- From cydia, install OpenSSH

Now you have everything that you want to start, and here is a step by step approach

1- Open WinSCP and synchronies with your iphone/itouch

2- Find ““root/system/library/fonts/Cache”. Copy and paste fonts to Cache folder

3- Copy “CGFontCache.plist” into the “root/system/libarary/fonts

4- That’s all; make sure you restart your phone to see the changes.

You can also use DiskAid toinstall fonts and other applications into your iphone. I find this software bit easy to use, although it has some limitations compare to WinSCP.

 

References


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