Business and Money Tips

Whether you are a trainer, manager, salesperson or professional, you often give extra things to people. Such bonuses usually are in non-monetary terms. Common bonuses include free coaching, extra tuition, paid holidays and of course training (paid by companies).   Unfortunately, many people consider such bonuses as onouses instead. This is because they don't see any value in these bonuses. They also feel that they incur extra effort and time to get these 'free bonuses", like to attend training they must wake up early. When the staff see these bonuses as onuses, their perception of their bosses will become more negative than before.  Thus it is important that we must ensure that bonuses do not become onuses or this will backfire and make us look stupid.  There are 3 things that we must do if we don't want our bonuses to become onuses: Place a value in the bonuses , let them know how much they have to pay if they were to buy from outside, and incur extra costs

Contrary to popular thinking, you don't need to be an Entrepreneur to be rich. The point is not how much limit you can earn as an employee or manager, but how much limit have you placed on yourself? Be a No-Limits Person: Expand Your Knowledge and You'll Achieve More! Our education system prepares us for the technical skills, but we know that it is the non technical skills that will make us stand out and be successful. Such important skills include selling our ideas, inter-personal skills, how to deal with difficult people, how to follow smartly and how to be coached and be teachable . There is simply no one that can limit your income. You need to know what what's most important in your role, which are summarized as follows: Manager - To Grow Employees This is about creating a dynamic workplace where the efforts you make with your employees today will blossom into success for years to come. It includes listening to them, preparing their mind for more responsibility, co

Many managers avoid the handling of poor performers.  They are afraid to do anything for fear of losing that staff.  Some have no guts and zero assertiveness, that's why they do nothing.  Others went the other extreme and become a terrible boss and undermine the entire team.  We know that a manager is responsible for what his team does, so if his people are not performing, that means the manager is not performing . Therefore it is imperative that a good manager must handle under-performers without undermining them.  There are 4 steps to do this: Identify and Agree on the Performance Shortfall .  You need to analyse the areas of shortfall (like not hitting sales targets consistently), obtain agreement from the staff and most importantly, let the staff know how that shortfall is affecting business in the whole organization.   Reason for Shortfall : The manager should not be crudely attach blame but jointly identify the facts that have caused the shortfall.  So no use saying t

(note: Course details at here ) Office politics is inevitable, although many leaders will tell you that there is no place for politics in their office.   Politics is defined as what people do to influence decision-makers, accomplish hidden agendas and advance their career to the detriment of others .   By itself, politics is not bad if it works to serve the company's goals by making sure that everyone is productive and adding value and morale remains high.  In fact politics introduce competition in the company and keep everyone on their toes.  But politics is bad when it is leading the company into self-destruction.   Whether you are new or experienced in management, it pays to learn how to handle office politics. There are 3 steps to do so: Step 1: Size up the Political Arena . It could be mild, moderate, high and pathologically politicised. If it is highly politicised, conflicts are usually resolved in a highly destructive way.  Blame and termination are common.  St

I love unconventional management: the management ways that only those people that never study management do.  People like Larry Page, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin all never went to MBA school, they are just computer nerds that know nothing other than computer programming.  Yet the companies that they lead - Google, Facebook and Apple - are one of the world's most admired employers. Indeed unconventional management leads to unconventional profits.  The 7 areas of unconventional management includes: Never hire the best people available in the market , hire the best not yet available in the market. Only in this way can you grab talents before your competitors. Never hire people that look for a job, hire people when they're still in schools or never think of changing jobs Smart creative people are what a company needs, not just smart people.  People are creative when they do things in their own ways even when they're not left alone . Some people called th

The 5 Leadership Lessons of Lee Kuan Yew include: Build Winning Teams .  Lee not only built one strong team, he built many strong teams. Most importantly, the teams went on to win many battles, be it the unions, business associations, tertiary institutions or Government-linked companies like Capitaland and DBS.  Lee's legacy is unprecedented Stubborn Yet Flexible .  Lee was stubborn to his goals yet was flexible if times have changed.  Like he pushed for the merger with Malaysia, yet changed his position two years later when things didn't work out Win People Over with Ideas, not Ideals .  Lee won the hearts of many with his far-sighted yet pragmatic ideas.  The US President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were his admirers. Yet he welcomed debates but would not hesitate to point out you are wrong if he thinks so. In the end even his opponents like Opposition Leaders Chiam See Tong and Lau Thia Kiang spoke highly of him.  Leading a Very Virtuous Li

From discussions with my clients today, I realized that many managers are not doing critical thinking in their job.  In fact many of them are doing 'Criticizing Thinking', because they think that criticising people is part of their job. Truth be told, being critical and criticising are different things .  You don't criticise just for the sake of criticising .  If a manager is not doing critical thinking, he is not doing the right thinking and will soon be doing 'follower thinking', or commonly called 'Group Think'.  Worse still, the manager is doing this thing called 'not thinking', and he will soon be not a manager. What is Critical Thinking?  Why is critical thinking important?  Critical thinking is about being able to think in ways that can understand events in this world and ultimately lead to problem solving .  It is obvious that a manager's job is to solve problems, and he is not doing critical thinking, how can he solve problems?  

(This article was first written in April 2014. This is the original un-censored version. The edited version has been selected and published in The Straits Times on 14 March 2015 page R2 Recruit Section) People are more capable than what you think.  Whether you are dealing with your staff, customers, suppliers, contractors or children, you should adopt an open mind and do not limit people's capabilities.  Currently you may see low performance, but understand that such  performance is determined by causes and conditions set before.    Once the causes and conditions change, performance will change .  For example, Japan's economy has, since 1992, on a decline phase and till today 2015, it has not recovered to its glory days of 1980s.  This is because of the causes and conditions that Japan has, chief among them is its closed door immigration policy that limits foreign talents.  If Japan were to change its immigration policy and attract talents like Singapore or USA, its econom

This is especially true if you are working in a long established organization with many senior members: you realize that there is a lack of spark in your company.  People do their work well, but there is no passion, enthusiasm and excitement.  Time passes very fast and people get along well, but they are not good friends. Laughter is not often heard, so are quarrels.  In time to come such an organization will become more of passing time than making a difference. If left unchecked, it will also decline because younger people wouldn't want to join or stay in such an life-less place.   We know that when you enjoy work, work will be easier.  Being in a good company also makes us more productive, for we are happier and less stressed.  We seem to be able to do the impossible with our infectious enthusiasm and motivation. In short, people look forward to work.  Time passes even faster.  The happy work environment gets contagious and your customers and suppliers would also feel it

The past one week of mourning for Singapore's founding father and first prime minster Lee Kuan Yew teach us one thing: never order people to do anything. Get them to volunteer instead.  To manage the big crowds of people queueing to pay their last respect to Mr Lee when his body was lying in state at the Parliament House from Wednesday to Saturday (25 to 27 March 2015), the government did not: Issue orders to the SAF soldiers to work overtime  Ask the private sector to donate food, drinks and umbrellas to the people in queue Get any ministers to speak to ask people to come out and help Ask people to queue up orderly for 10 hours Issue any rule on how to behave while in queue (like what clothes to wear, not to take pictures or videos etc) Instead what we saw were: Non-stop queues of people forming 24 hours since Wednesday 25 March 2015 until Saturday 28 March 2015 Many thousands in queue for more than 10 hours just to pay less than 10 seconds of respect No one comp